Panathinaikos departed today heading to Sofia , where it is to be participating in an international tournament (14-15 September) alongside Barcelona , Red Star and Lukoil Akademik. Absent from the delegation will be Dimitris Diamantidis (calf pain), George Diamantakos and Roko Leni Ukic, the later expected in Athens from Croatia on Sunday (September 16) at 19.15h.
Clover coach, Argyris Pedoulakis stressed: “We are traveling to Sofia for the first tough tourney having to cope with a sidelined Dimitris Diamantidis and the absence still of Ukic. Witch means we shall be competing without two of the team’s three point guards. We have two absences in a position hard to fill. What I have insisted upon is for my players to always be in a positive state of mind. We must use these games in order to learn how to compete without Diamantidis. It is a great test for us and we must make the most of it. On the other hand we do have Armstrong with us, our latest addition. He has not been with us long and we are all trying to help him adjust as fast as possible. Come Monday, Ukic will be with us, while we are still searching for one player more. What we are interested in seeing, in this tournament, is the state in which everyone is in. What we want and what must happen is continuous monitoring of the players’ moods, to see team spirit and gradually get automatisms out of them. And from then on, upon our return we must come to our conclusions, right our wrongs and keep on working using video as an optical aid. Vision is way mightier that speech”.
Charis Giannopoulos stated: “Friendly games at this point, are of great importance. You can see what has come of all your hard work in training and you get the chance to bond as a team. It will be kind of weird, since both point guards will be missing, Diamantidis and Ukic, but we must try the best we can in order to fill in their very important spots. There are the players who will be calling the shots on the perimeter but we will get to see how we perform without them. Many things have changed on the team but I don’t think that the fact of defense being the key will be affected. It is where everything begins, whilst in offense what we aspire towards is to be able to swiftly read into the plays and recognize our advantages”.
Panathinaikos will be facing Red Star tomorrow at 18.30h while in the second clash of day 1 of the Sofia tournament, Lukoil Akademik will be going against Barcelona (20.30h).
