Big night for Olympiakos against Real Madrid in Euroleague
Yet another road defeat for hapless Panathinaikos
Olympiakos recaptured the summit of the Euroleague table through an emphatic home win over hitherto leader Real Madrid on Friday. Panathinaikos, in turn, suffered one more defeat on the road on Thursday, this time at Virtus Bologna.
This was a night of triumph for Olympiakos at the Peace and Friendship Stadium as it defeated Real 73-60 in front of a capacity crowd.
The Reds played a very consistent game that strangled the Spanish offense, keeping the visitors at bay throughout the game.
Thomas Walkup led the Piraeus team’s scorers with 18 points, ahead of Sasha Vezenkov with 15 and Kostas Sloukas with 11.
Olympiakos is now joint top of the table with 13 wins from 20 matches.
Panathinaikos went down 74-64 at Virtus Bologna and continues to languish near the bottom of the Euroleague table.
A decent 15 minutes in the second half did not suffice for the Greens to undo the hosts. Even when the Greeks overturned their first-half deficit of 13 points (43-30), to lead for a moment 57-55, they conceded 14 unanswered points and surrendered to the Italians.
On a particularly poor night for top scorer Dwayne Bacon (2/11 field goals), Nate Wolters paced the Greens with 15 points.
With a 7-13 record, the realization that this team is going nowhere appears to have seriously affected its game.
