Impressive Olympiacos overpower SLUC Nancy 91-78: Euroleague Recap (Part 1)
Olympiacos have been amongst the most unfortunate teams of the Euroleague 2011 so far.
However after two close losses against Caja Laboral and Bennet Cantu in the last two weeks, they came back strongly and collected a much needed confidence boosting win by overpowering SLUC Nancy 91-78 in their fifth outing of the
league. Both Olympiacos and Nancy with two wins each are sharing the 4th spot in their group now.
It was a thoroughly clinical performance by Olympiacos. Not only were they good on the offense but the Greeks displayed fibrous defense too. Their defense was specifically focused on the scoring machine from Nancy, Nicolas Batum.
Olympiacos hounded the Portland Trail Blazers guard and held him to only 9 points in the game.
Nancy were very much in the game at the end of the first half however, the game kept drifting away from them in the later quarters.
SLUC Nancy’s coach also admired the defense of the opponent team and boldly accepted the fact that they were beaten by a better team on the night. Congratulating the winning team and pointing out the main reasons for the loss,
he added
“First of all congratulations to Olympiacos, because they had a good game and they managed to break down our balance. We had to keep them at less than 70 points, but they scored 91 and it was impossible to beat them with such a
defensive performance. A reason for our defeat is that we missed many free throws and finally it made the difference. Batum didn't score as he usually does, but we could have won"
Vassilis Spanoulis marshaled the winning team with game high 26 points on a near perfect shooting - 8 for 9 from the free throw line and 4 for 6 from the three-point range. He was assisted well by Michalis Pelekanos and Andreas
Glyniadakis, who played the supporting role perfectly and ended with 11 and 10 points respectively.
From Nancy’s side, Adrien Moerman scored 20 including 6 for 9 from the paint and pulled down 6 rebounds. John Linehan had a good personal outing and added 17 points whereas Jamal Schuler added another 15.
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