Home team made the best out of its advantage and managed to keep up with defending champ Panathinaikos’ s pace in the line of the finals. It prevailed 79-72 in a clash that could mostly be characterized as a battle between to respectively uneasy and nervous team spreads. Hosts came off tip-off to go for an opening 4-0 run as Schortsanitis musculed his way into the paint towards the bucket. However, Panathinaikos answered back immediately and behind a Diamantidis nothing-but-net triple led for the first time on the floor at 4’ (6-7) as both teams went neck and neck down the stretch to minute 10, standings at 18-16. Tepic came off the bench to provide Panathinaikos with solutions at both ends of the court to jog his team to 20-18, though minute 15’ featured the clover trailing by 5 (23-18), score formed praise to Scoony Penn’s first triple for the home team not only in this encounter but also after 40 minutes of three-pointer draught they had experience at OAKA in game 1 of the series. The greens’ main issue was their inability to gat range, seeing that up to 15’ only three players had got their names up on the socre board (Diamantidis, Tepic, Pekovic). Nevertheless the greens managed to pick up the pace thanks to great defense (25-25, 17’), Pekovic leading the way in frontcourt. It was Jasi’s turn to step up in the matchup as he sunk 5 consecutive points to provide the guests with the lead (28-30), 1’30’’ pending on the game clock to intermission. The clover headed to the locker rooms up by 1 (33-34), having been awarded only a pair of free throws, which were good at that (2/2), the same time the home team in the respective time span had got to the line 11 times.
The hosts returned to the court in pure determination, as Panathinaikos still had not established the appropriate means to pace itself. Linas Kleiza led to 48-41 at 25’, Zeljko Obradovic being forced to call for a time-out. At 25’30’’ score was at 50-41 and the gap stood steady all the way down to 30’ (56-47). 4th quarter still hosted Panathinaikos in bad form, a fact exploited to the largest by its rival, who managed to escape 65-52 at 33’, Papaloukas and Milos Teodosic swapping triples for their team. At this point Panathinaikos input its final effort to stay alive in the game, but even though it got solutions from down town shots even off Big Man Batiste all it could get to was a trail circumcision down to final standing 79-72.
Quarters: 18-16, 33-34, 56-47, 79-72
Olympiakos (Yannakis): Papaloukas 3, Teodosic 16, Schortsanitis 2, Childress 12, Penn 3, Bourousis 14, Kleiza 17. Mavrokefalidis 5, Vujcic, Vassilopoulos
Panathinaikos: Tepic 9, Spanoulis 2 , Perperoglou , Batiste 9, Fotsis , Tsartsaris , Nicholas 9, Diamantidis 11, Pekovic 22, Jasikevicius 10
