It didn’t take much to Olimpia to understand Olympiaco’s power and depth. The Greek powerhouse started the game 12-2 looking almost untouchable, the way it clogged the middle and executed on offense. However, Olimpia was able to regroup and took the lead late in the first; again came within two in the second quarter and within four in the third. “Every time we played good basketball, we moved the ball and we defended, we came back only to ruin everything in a matter of a few minutes, maybe less. It happened all the three times we had momentum,” Coach Ettore Messina remarker at the end after a punishing 89-68 loss in Piraeus.

Olimpia was never able to ignite Nikola Mirotic and Shavon Shields’ firepower and relied for most of the game to execution. Neno Dimitrijevic has six assists; Shavon Shields had five; Ousmane Diop had a marvelous game as starter replacing the injured Josh Nebo; Pippo Ricci was huge in the second half. Olimpia started the third quarter hitting one three with Dimitrijevic and three straight with Ricci from the two corners. A 15-point deficit became a four-point margin. But the team never got closer than that.

“We need to get better, we know we have to work in terms of setting the right tempo, help each other defensively. We have line-ups that are very solid defensively and others are prettymuch non existent. We know wehere we need to work on. Olympiacos is extremely deep: they missed two great players tonight and didn’t miss blink. This is huge in the EuroLeague. For most teams, a couple of players out are weighing a lot,” Messina said.