One more time, Olimpia had a lethargic start to the game and to rally to try to defeat a very healthy, brilliant and confident Alba Berlin team. But this time, Olimpia came up short in overtime, losing 80-74. Alba built a 14-point first quarter lead that ballooned to 17. Then finally Olimpia started to be effective, at least at the defensive end. It was able to shrink the deficit to eight points at the end of the first half despite making one three in the entire half. The first comeback attempt in the third quarter was frustrated at the end of the period when Alba took advantage of some defensive lapses to established a nine-point lead again. The fourth quarter was sensational especially with Kyle Hines in the paint and Kevin Pangos. He made four straight threes in a 16-point second half that allowed Olimpia to close the deficit to two points. That was when Kyle Hines conquered himself two free throws, made them and tied the score. Alba had one more offensive possession, but Melli stayed with Tamir Blatt, forced him to pass the ball and Johannes Thiemann attempted an impossible shot that gave Olimpia a transition opportunity to win the game. Unfortunately, Melli’s corner three didn’t find the net. The overtime caught the team fatigued after a taxing comeback. Melli scored the go-ahead basket, Wetzell tied it again. Nobody scored again for almost three minutes. Shields tied again from the line a little later, but when Blatt made the three Olimpia was pushed to the ropes.

“They played a very good game, especially the first half – Coach Ettore Messina pointed out -, we made a good comeback but we lost the game mostly for two reasons. We had a lot of miscommunications at the defensive end that cost us a lot of points, this is my responsibility as a coach, we’ll work on it, make sure we are all on the same page, that everybody knows what to do and do it. Then we built a lot of open shots and we missed them. This is part of the game. It is my job to help them doing better, because they tried, they work hard every day. We keep starting the game slowly, tonight we had four guys from last season and Kevin Pangos, but offensively our first quarter was lethargic.”