Sfairopoulos, after the 84:69 win over Red Star: “What we couldn’t do in the last 5 minutes of the game, we concluded in overtime. This win will give us confidence, and we will learn from it”
“I want to congratulate our players on the victory, it wasn’t an easy game. We deserve to win, especially with how the game ended in overtime”. Said Coach Giannis Sfairopoulos at the press conference after the game. “We started the game with great effort on both sides of the court, controlled the flow most of the time, and we went into halftime with a 9 point advantage. In the second half, we did struggle in some points of the game, but for the most part, we played well until the 35th minute. At that moment, we started making bad decisions, we were stressed to get the result the right outcome, and because of it, gave up easy points to our opponent”.
Coach explained what went differently in overtime: “What we couldn’t do in the last 5 minutes of the game, we concluded in overtime as we were determined to win. We played with brighter ideas on both sides of the ball, allowed only 2 points, and on the offensive side, Scottie led the way with everybody stepping up and making better decisions”.
“We are happy to get our first win”. Emphasized Sfairopoulos. “We had pressure on us after losing two good games on the road. This win will give us confidence, and we will learn from it how not to lose our concentration and faith. I want to thank all of our fans, they were our sixth player tonight and going forward, we need them in every game to give us that extra push”.
The greek coach concluded: “We are happy to provide Shimon this victory, he deserves it”.
“I was really focussed in overtime. I didn’t want to get a third loss”. Said Scottie Wilbekin after leading Maccabi in overtime to their first win of the new EuroLeague campaign. “We started playing extra hard in overtime, and I was trying to be aggressive. I didn’t get anything going in the first four quarters, so I just tried to force it”.
Omri Casspi, who scored 15 points in his first EuroLeague home game in ten years, explained: “We’ve got to work on our end-of-game execution. We got pressured with double-back screens on the defensive end, and that affected us. We’ve got to be better”.
