Panathinaikos is back to Russia to face Khimki this time
Panathinaikos is back to Russia to face Khimki this time
The 5th round of Euroleague will start tomorrow with the game between Khimki Moscow and Panathinakos Athens. Last year both teams won their home games, with Khimki winning in Russia by 8 points, 76-68 thanks to a very good performance by Anthony Gill who finished with 21 point and 5 rebounds. Let’s see a preview of this game.
Khimki is coming after the big win in Germany against Bayern, 87-74. The game started a little low for them, losing the first quarter by two points, but after that, they took the lead and never looked back. In this game their shooting was very good, finishing with 55% from the field, 31 shots made out of 56 attempts. Their passing drives them to the win, recording 17 assists. The main performers were Alexey Shved (19 points and 9 assists), Anthony Gill (17 points and 6 rebounds) and Jannis Timma (13 points and 4 rebounds). In VTB they have a dream start 5-0 and this weekend didn’t have any match, so the players are well rested before this clash. For this game, they will have the same absentees as in the game with Bayern: Petr Gubanov, Stefan Jovic, Chris Kramer and Egor Vialtsev. Khimki can easily overcome those injuries because they have a very long squad and they can put anytime 10 players in a match as we saw against Bayern, were 10 players played at least 10 minutes.
After the defeat suffered against Milano, Panathinaikos managed to beat PAOK, Zenit and Aris in a row. Last round they had another trip to Russia. Zenit fought to make a nice surprise, but Panathinaikos, led by Fredette and Calathes, won the encounter with 89-79. Their shooting was very good, but the way they moved the ball was even better. The whole team recorded 27 assists, including 15 from Nick Calathes. Fredette ended the game with 22 points and 4 assists, while DeShaun Thomas had 17 points. After that, they returned to Greece and played against Aris after less than 48 hours from Russia’s trip. They won that game by big margin 108-86, but the most important thing was to take care of their starting five, limiting them to no more than 16 minutes each, in order to give them a little more rest before another long trip in Russia. For this game, all players are available for Argiris Pedoulakis.
It’s important to see if Panathinaikos can resist to this 3 games in five days schedule, with two long trips to Russia. Khimki have a good squad, better than Zenit’s, and if you take into consideration the longer break they had, the outcome is very hard to predict. I think Khimki can grab the win here, but it’s sure that the Greek squad will fight till the last second.
Photo: Euroleague.net
Bogdan Vasile Tirc
