Real facing Olympiacos in Madrid for the win
In Round 13 of Euroleague, there will be a duel between two of the most successful teams in the Euroleague’s history, Real Madrid and Olympiacos Piraeus. Last year, both teams won their home games, with Real winning in Spain 94-78, while in Greece, Olympiacos won 88-83.
Real’s season is very good until now with 9-3 record in Euroleague, where is 3rd placed and 10-3 record in Spain where is on the first place. Last league game was against San Pablo Burgos at home and they won it by 11 points, 104-93. They took the advantage in the first minutes of the game and at halftime they had an 18 points lead 55-37. In the second half, they played with less energy, giving many minutes to their second unit, with 12 players with more than 7 minutes each on the court. The main contributors were: Trey Thompkins (27 points and 7 rebounds), Gabriel Deck (16 points and 6 assists) and Walter Tavares (13 points and 11 rebounds). They recorded 25 assists for 35 field attempts made, which shows a great team effort and a lot of patience in building their attacks. Sergio Llull, Salah Mejri and Felipe Reyes will be out for this game.
Olympiacos is coming after a game against Panathinaikos, their eternal rivals from Greece. They played in OAKA last Euroleague round, but unfortunately, they lost in overtime 99-93, after the last seconds shot made by Papagiannis. Oly’s shooting was pretty decent and better than Panathinaikos’s, but PAO had more shots attempts thanks to 12 turnovers made by the reds. Also, at the free-throw line, Oly scored only 20 out of 31 attempts. They simply had no chance against Tyrece Rice who made a monstrous game finishing with 41 points with 8-16 from distance. For Olympiacos, the main contributors were: Vassilis Spanoulis (18 points and 5 assists), Brandon Paul (17 points and 6 rebounds) and Nikola Milutinov (14 points and 10 rebounds). For the game against Real Madrid, they will be without Spanoulis, while Kevin Punter, who missed the last game, will be a game decision.
Real Madrid has the first chance to win this game because their roster is superior to Olympiacos’s. The absence of Spanoulis will weight too much in Olympiacos tactics and I don’t see how they can put some problems in Spain without their main artist.
Photo: Euroleague
Bogdan Vasile Tirc
