When the going gets tough… Kyle Hines did it again. The best offensive rebounder in the EuroLeague history grabbed the key offensive board with two seconds left in the game, earned a trip to the line and made the winning free throw in a 76-75 road win for Olimpia in Athens. It is the 8th road win of the season, the 18th overall. It doesn’t matter how you look at the standings, Olimpia is free to celebrate its second playoffs’ berth in two years. Hines closed the game with 13 points and 10 rebounds.

In truth, Olimpia after a poor start, dominated the second and third quarter, used a couple of offensive explosions by Pippo Ricci in the first half and Troy Daniels in the third, Malcolm Delaney scored 15 points and Sergio Rodriguez added nine points to his nine assists. The early eight point deficit was turned into a 12-point lead on many different junctures. “Then we stopped moving the ball, we turned the ball over too many times and didn’t finish well against a proud Panathinaikos team. We started and finished on a bad note, in the middle I think we had a very good game, with 21 assists, we outrebounded a big-sized team. It is not easy,” Coach Ettore Messina said.

Olimpia had the game won late, but a seven-point lead was reduced to four off a Nemanja Nedovic long-range jumper, Daryl Macon added a mid-ranger and suddenly Olimpia had a two-point margin. That was when Nedovic with a huge steal tied the game up with a little more than 30 seconds left. Rodriguez tried a step-back three that found the rim, but Hines used all his incredible rebounding awareness, stripped the ball and gained two free throws. He made the first and intentionally missed the second to keep Panathinaikos to call a time-out and advance the ball.