The comeback was incomplete this time. Olimpia tried to rally from 13 points down in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t finish the job and lost 102-96 to Alba Berlin. Led by Sergio Rodriguez, Vlado Micov and a small lineup, Olimpia reduced the Alba’s lead to two points, then Michael Roll had the corner three to cut the margin to one. He missed and when Luke Sikma and Martin Hermansson scored on back-to-back possessions, Alba closed the game, winning deservedly. “They have a lot to do with our loss – Coach Ettore Messina said at the end -, but our game was defensively bad. You cannot score 96 points at home and lose. We allowed them to score 45 in the first half, we were tied and at halftime we said that we had to present a EuroLeague-caliber defense in the second half. The answer was allowing them to score 57. There’s not much else to say or comment, our defensive game was mediocre. And when you are not able to do anything defensively you play nervous at the other end because you feel like you have to score otherwise you’re going down. Two points, four, six points. Still, our offensive game was good, we scored, we shot with a very high percentage, we had 29 assists.”