THY Euroleague To16 Game 2 is at the gates and Panathinaikos is heading to Turkey . The Greens will be facing Anadolu Efes tomorrow (January 3, 21.45), having as a granted injured Dimitris Diamantidis absence.
The Panathinaikos Head Coach, Argyris Pedoulakis, stressed slightly prior to departure: “We are facing a team with a deep roster and moreover, especially when performing at home if it manages to enforce its pace things become extremely dangerous. We must remain focused throughout the entire encounter since our opponent might use all different schemes; play with greater velocity in the transition game but also at a set game when it wishes to execute its plays. That is why we must be prepared, body and soul. We will be competing without Diamantidis. It is a loss, in the sense that he has a multi activity in defense, offense, creation and execution. On the contrary, Schortsanitis has already got into a training rhythm and will be with us. Important for us is that the new guys get a bit of action in yet another game, a Euroleague road game at that”.
Roko Leni Ukic, for whom it will be Euroleague game 100, stressed: “It will be quite a tough clash across from a very tough opponent and we will be missing Diamantidis. Everybody must do just a little something more in order to cover the gap left by him, because he is our leader and it will certainly be tougher without him. But we have proven that we can play well and get to positive results. However, we must make the periods in which we play good basketball last longer. We can accomplish something good in Turkey . Anadolu Efes plays exceptionally well, especially when at home and it will be a great challenge for us. They base their efforts quite a lot on Farmar and Vujacic, on their creation and their offensive talent. Our first goal is to manage to contain these elements. They have players of great quality, so we can’t say that we will contain one and get to the win. It takes all 40 minutes efforts in order to get to victory”.
Jonas Maciulis speaking at the “Eleftherios Venizelos” added: “Our goal is to win. We know that it won’t be an easy deal, since Efes is an exceptional team and moreover at home it drives strength from its fans becoming an even better team. What we are interested in though is getting to our second Top16 win. We know what we must do as also that we have essentially two new players on the team, Kapono and Gist. Both however proved that they can help us in defense and offense, so I believe that they will help us also this time”.
