Panathinaikos is called upon to take its first victory in the finals series of the OPAP BasketLeague playoffs at the OAKA on Thursday (24/5, 7 p.m.) after having walked away with a final score of 84-78 playing off Olympiakos tonight at the “Peace and Friendship” stadium.
Feisty in many cases, showing on the other hand a lack of concentration in some other periods of time, Panathinaikos proved unable to make the most of the good performance it showed for the better part of the first half. The hometeam led (3-0 at 30’’, 5-2 at 2’), before the “Greens” balanced the game and got in the lead themselves, a lead that went as much as +5 points (14-20, 9’27’’). Dusan Ivkovic saw his players making a comeback by making the right choices in offence, defense, as well as by getting second chances through the rebounds. As a result, they initially had a 9-1 run that put them in the lead (23-21, 13’18’’), while by maintaining control of the game tempo they boosted the lead to eight points and a score of 41-33, by which the two teams headed for the locker-rooms at halftime. Panathinaikos had already had Vougioukas and Kaimakoglou assessed with 3 fouls (the former already since the first quarter).
The “clover” found itself losing ground the first minutes into the third quarter, gottoa-11deficit (47-36, 23’48’’), before making a comeback to crunch the gap down to two points again with Sarunas Jasikevicius scoring and passing around assists and Dimitris Diamantidis succeeding in a three-pointer (49-47, 27’10’’), to put his seal on a 9-0 run. The two teams continued in the third quarter without any of them being able to truly break away from the other and with Panathinaikos finding offensive solutions by the hand of Ian Vougioukas, whom his teammates kept trying to “feed” the ball to in the paint. A score of 58-55 (31’10’’), turned into 74-63 (36’40’’) with the home team coming up with solutions from long-range shots too by Papanikolaou and Gecevicius and the “Greens” leading the game to free throws behind the charity line in the last two minutes. This tactic brought about some fruit since Diamantidis reduced the lead to five points (81-76) with 20’’ left until the final buzzer; Vougioukas did the same with two free throws of his own (83-78) with 19’’ left on the clock. The final score of 84-78 was achieved by Kyle Hines who succeeded in ½ free throws and gave his team a 1-0 lead in the finals series of the OPAP BasketLeague playoffs.
Referees: Anastopoulos, Foufis, Afentoulidis
By quarter: 15-20, 41-33, 58-52, 84-78
Olympiakos (Ivkovic): Hines 13, Antic 9, Spanoulis 9, Dorsey 3, Papadopoulos, Gecevicius11, Printezis 18, Papanikolaou 16, Mantzaris 2, Sloukas 1, Katsivelis
Panathinaikos (Obradovic): Maric, Perperoglou 12, Batiste 10, Sato 3, Tsartsaris 3, Diamantidis 15, Vougioukas 20, CalathesΝ. 7, Smith, Kaimakoglou4, Jasikevicius 4
