Greeks never surrender: AEK Athens – SIG Strasbourg

We saw many fantastic comebacks from Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and other Greek teams and yesterday was AEK time to impress in a tough encounter. The hosts had important missings starting with the veteran Nikos Zizis and continuing with Jonas Maculis, Marcus Slaughter, while other guys played with small injuries.

SIG Strasbourg needed the win being at 0-2 after the first round and they played like hell. They dominated the first quarter, but the Greek team slowly came back and then took the lead. In a shorthanded version of themselves, AEK resisted thanks to a very clever game.

The visitors from France had an important missing too, Bonzie Colson, their main scorer and this affected them a lot on the offensive end. But even without him, SIG Strasbourg could have won the battle if AEK didn’t provoke them to many fouls and turnovers in key moments of the game.

I don’t know if you realised that Sig Strasbourg had the first free-throws in the second part of the 3rd quarter, while AEK Athens had 18 free-throws given till halftime. A huge difference that reflected the strategy of the Greek side: they played very active in offense, penetrating and forcing the opponents to commit many fouls. This bright strategy saved the day and the AEK Athens dominated the end of the encounter. They proved chemistry, group strength and a smart move of the ball.

Image: Basketball Champions League