Forced to play 36 hours after the Istanbul overtime battle, Olimpia didn’t have the energy for extended minutes and lost in Naples, 77-68, despite another monumental 26-point effort by Nikola Mirotic. Mirotic himself started the game slowly, confirming what was the biggest fear entering this game. Olimpia was mentally and physically spent. Naples took advantage of the circumstances, led by as many as 14 points early in the game. Olimpia responded in the second quarter, played well, tied the game up and look to have momentum moving to the second half. “And this is when we had another bad start – Coach Ettore Messina pointed out – The two starts cost us the game. We had a very good second period, we turned the game around, but it wasn’t enough. They were playing well, they prepared the game well, they deserved to win. The Istanbul game didn’t help of course, this is our reality, because when you are fatigued it happens to come here and take the first three-pointer available. But this fact doesn’t take anything away from how well they played, exactly like I anticipated. In our loss there’s a lot of them.”

Mirotic had 26 points over 32 minutes with five made threes. At some point in the second half he looked into some kind of rhythm, but there was enough offense around the team today, no legs strong enough. Mirotic was the only double-digit scorer. Devon Hall had seven points in the first half, Diego Flaccadori occasionally made some shots, Kevin Pangos finished with nine. There was no consistency.

Devon Hall returned after missing the Istanbul game with a minor injury. Johannes Voigtmann was out after the overload he handled during the World Cup and obviously Billy Baron and Maodo Lo were out.