Argyris Pedoulakis talked about the will of the players and the defense, while speaking at the press conference after the cup semifinal against Olympiacos. He saved a special mention to Jonas Maciulis and Nikos Pappas.
"I think that it was a nervous game, full of tension and passion, something logical because this game was just on the way for a title. Olympiacos has had great games so far, while we weren't able to step on the court the way we wanted. The key was the defense. We managed to break their passing game and they remained 22 points below their scoring average. Olympiacos gets a lot of points from pick n roll situations. I agree that we had greater wil and we won a lot of loose balls with the energy we brought in the game. We tried and we had the ball in the paint 39 times, staying true to our plan. During the last minutes we posted up with Maciulis, who was playing against Law. We had a lot of mis matches. Olympiacos used a smaller line up. They were pressing on the three point line we risked it and that was the key to the win. You saw, when a team cannot break the defense how many problems come up. It's something we are facing too.
I would like to say something in public for the two players who played today. We had a big problem at guards. Diamantidis is not on his prime. Maciulis and Pappas with only one practice they were amazing. Maciulis in our game plan and Nikos helped in different parts of the game, giving Diamantidis the time to rest".
Asked on how much this win will help psychologically the team, Pedoulakis replied: "Teams are after titles. We made a big step towards a title. We know our issues. We hope that we will not have to face them again after these days".
Ramel Curry, noted: "Thank God we achieved our goal, we got a big win without any more injuries. It was a big game, with great rivalry and we knew about the difficulty of the game and that we had to perform well. We performed well and we got the win".
Giorgos Bartzokas (coach, Olympiacos) stated: "The game was what everybody witnessed. It was obvious by the way Panathinaikos was going to every ball, that they wanted the game more. They were thirstier and they won. The rhythm of the game went slow, there were a lot of turnovers and a lot of hasty decisions from both teams. Overall it was a bad game. Open shots that both teams usually makes, didn't went in this time. This happened because of the rivalry and it's something normal. A lot of our players couldn't live up to the expectations. For some of them it was the first time in such an atmosphere, especially the foreigners. Of course some of the Greek players were affected too.
Congratulations to Panathinaikos for the win. We still have a bitter taste since we didn't do our game. In this the well-known mr Tanatzis had his part. He took mr Shinas calls running from one side of the court to the other. We had drives and no fouls were called. At the end we only had 4 free throws. Panathinaikos played good defense, since they managed to create problems in our passing game. The decisions of the players were affected by the attitude of the referees, since we wouldn't go to the free throw line".
Kostas Sloukas (player, Olympiacos) noted: "We expected this to be a tough games. We had the worse defeat after 23 wins in the row, because a title was decided today. Olympiacos goes on and we ll focus on the next day and the other two remaining goals".
