It’s all about the heart as in the best Olimpia’s tradition. With no Alessandro Gentile, stopped by a leg injury, the Euroleague top scorer sonfar, with no Milan Macvan, Olimpia played an aggressive game, shared balls and responsibilities, never gave up and finally won 88-84 over Efes. “I said before the game we needed to fight all together, fans included to beat that kind of team. Saved the last second quarter five minutes when we didn’t respect our plan to stop their transition to avoid easy points by them, we played a great game” Coach Rerpesa said. Jamel McLean had a career-night scoring 26 points equally distributed between the two halves. He was a terror inside. Stanko Barac was 6 for 9 from the field. “I tried to explain before the game to stay focused and not letting their players to gain confidence. Without their best player they felt no pressure. This is exactly what happened. Their bigs killed us” Coach Ivkovic said. Kruno Simon had a terrific all-around game making the best possible Gentile’s impersonation by adding assists and rebounds to his scoring. But all the eight players used by Repesa were incredible and instrumental in the win. Cinciarini in the early stages, Hummel in the end, Lafayette troughout the game. “It was a close game but Milano wanted to win more than us. They had more desire and deserved to win”, admitted Ivkovic. Olimpia survived also a great shooting night by Efes’ perimeter players. They were 13 for 19 in threes at the start of the fourth period. Then Heurtel got hurt and Olimpia’s defense took control.