THE bitterness is great. A ten-point lead the final quarter is difficult to digest in the face of a loss. But it’s just a drop in the series sea. No, it’s not an ocean because the basin in question is well-defined: five games. Four are left and three are needed to go to Istanbul. The first to enter the press room is Ivkovic. The irony is that it’s precisely Olympiacos’ coach the sheds some light on the situation. Looking at his face, it’s clear that this win does not decide the series. Olympiacos’ coach comments, “It was a very hard game – a playoff game. There were two completely different halves. We didn’t defend well the first half and Siena had great percentages. The second half of the game was our chance. That’s what I told my guys during halftime and they did a good job at taking advantage of it. But that doesn’t matter. We need to prepare one game at a time. Now we have an advantage, but not such a big one.” Pianigiani is disappointed. He comments, "It’s a shame. We had a ten-point lead fourth quarter. It was the situation we wanted to be in. Unfortunately, in order to win this type of game – to move forward – we need to be able to muster up everything we have against a team with so much energy and that’s much more athletic than we are. We needed to have more from everyone, but instead we missed some baskets on wayward balls, in dirty situations. So, they were able to get back in too easily. We played without Michelori today and practically without Lavrinovic. And we lost Moss because of fouls. In the end, we weren’t able to play our best defensive quintet and, on offense, we tried to be creative but failed. Too bad we didn’t make good use of Andersen’s great game.” Pianigiani concludes, “We should have been able to match either athleticism. The series? We know it’s not over. We knew it last year two after losing the first game. We need to fight together as a team.”

F.C.