Armani Milano facing Olympiacos in Piraeus

In Round 11 of Euroleague, Olympiacos will host Armani Milano in an interesting matchup between two teams that won Euroleague three times apiece, Olympiacos last time in 2012-2013, while Milano last win was in 1987-1988 season. Let’s see who’s more prepared before this match.
This season Olympiacos play only on Euroleague, while in the second Greek league, they play with the B team. In the last game against ALBA Berlin, they manage to get back to the victory path with a nice 99-80 win. They took an early 30-17 advantage after the first quarter and then protect and increased a little bit that difference in the end. They had more assists, more rebounds and fewer turnovers, but most important they shoot 55% from the field. The main contributors were: Augustine Rubit (16 points and 8 rebounds), Georgios Printezis (15 points), Brandon Paul (12 points and 3 rebounds) and Kostas Papanikolaou (12 points and 4 rebounds). They used 12 players in this game with 9 of them with at least 14 minutes on the court. It’s very important to offer minutes to all the players in order to keep them fit and ready for the big Euroleague’s battles.
Last Euroleague round was a bad one for Milano. They lost at home 76-81 against Anadolu Efes, but only because of their big amount of personal fouls. In the weekend they had another game at home in Legabasket against Dinamo Sassari, a powerful Italian team with big expectations from this season. However, Milano defended their home court with a comfortable 90-78 win. At the beginning of the last quarter, Brindisi had a 5 points advantage, but Milano’s shots from the 3-point line worked very well, with 6 made out of 10 attempts. The main scorers were: Luis Scola (15 points), Nemanja Nedovic (14 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists) and Vladimir Micov (12 points and 3 assists). For this game, Arturas Gudaitis is still out.
Olympiacos will try to continue on their winning ways, but they will face a hard opponent in Olimpia Milano. In this game, the most interesting duel for the fans is between former MVP’s, Vassilis Spanoulis and Sergio Rodriguez. I expect a win from Milano, but also a huge fight from Olympiacos players.
Photo: Euroleague.net
Bogdan Vasile Tirc