Athens –
At the end of the game against Panathinaikos these were the words of coach Luca Banchi: “Congratulations to Panathinaikos, a good win. The way we played for almost 30 minutes gave me the feeling that we could have competed until the end. I expected from them that they would react and unfortunately at the crucial moment, at the beginning of the last quarter, we could not compete against their aggressiveness and physicality. Their defense was remarkable, they made our ball circulation difficult. They were very precise, if you make only two fouls in almost 16 minutes it is a proof that their defense was aggressive but disciplined. On the other side I’m sorry because we played for most of the game precise, trying to take advantage on offense and be consistent, especially in the third quarter, defensively as well. The last 10 minutes gave me a lot of regrets, but our opponent did a great job. I saw how aggressively they played in the last ten minutes, how much Lessort asserted itself physically. We have to work on some details and correct them if we want to compete against top teams like Pana, we have to find a better continuity. For most of the game our performance was good despite the fact that we didn’t have an extraordinary night on our shooting. The three-point percentage, excluding Belinelli, did not help us open up the Panathinaikos defense and in the last ten minutes we lost consistency on both sides. We showed desire to compete at this level and we have to adapt, it is part of the process and there is room for improvement. We hope to get Jordan Mickey and Achille Polonara back soon, who can give a different structure to the team and will help us distribute responsibilities better. In general, I see that the team is looking for ways to compete every night. If we compare the game with Madrid and this one we can see that we are in a good direction. The tournament is still very long, the level of the teams is incredibly high and like many other teams we are looking for the right continuity to compere for all 40 minutes. Especially when you play away you can’t have so many ups and downs during the game. I liked the spirit and desire, we can improve with getting to know each other.”
“Three quarters of a good consistency and then unfortunately there was a major downturn. Panathinaikos had the merit of raising the level of their game and we were unable to respond. There is a lot of regret because we gave the feeling of suffering their aggressiveness and physicality in the moments when the game needed to be controlled, instead we made it easy for them. Their outside penetrations and Lessort’s physicality were the things that hurt us the most. Mitoglou spread his game over 40 minutes of good quality, but at the key moment Lessort came up mightily and we suffered. Let’s think about the next game, there is a very tough game for the top of the Serie A on Monday and we have to look ahead, we are managing an injury emergency that creates difficulties for us but we have to move forward and improve. We had a convincing start to the season but this is a competition that leaves no room and you have to aspire to excellence, tonight we were for a good part of the game but not always as we were often during the beginning of the season.”
