Olympiakos thrashes Maccabi as Greens lose at Fener
Olympiakos regained the second spot on the Euroleague table dismantling Maccabi Tel Aviv at home, as Panathinaikos dropped to fourth after defeat at champion Fenerbahce, at the start of another double-game week.
Olympiakos was more than emphatic in its second win over Maccabi this year, this time in Piraeus with a 94-64 score on Tuesday.
The Reds had needed a good game at home to shake off the bad loss at Baskonia last week, and thrashed the Israeli team that was quite poor on the night.
The Piraeus team scored 53 points in the first half (53-40) and speeded away in the second to stretch its distance to beyond 30 points along with offering fans some beautiful moments.
Vassilis Spanoulis was the home team’s top scorer with 13 points (he also had seven assists), with Nikola Milutinov adding another 12.
However the injury to Jamel McLean (who made 12 points in just five minutes) has somewhat dented the joy of Olympiakos coach Yiannis Sfairopoulos, as the American is doubtful for Thursday’s match against Khimki in Russia.
Panathinaikos fought to the bitter end against Fenerbahce and its former coach Zeljko Obradovic, but eventually succumbed with a 67-62 score in Istanbul on Wednesday. Worse, the Turkish team has now obtained a better head-to-head record against the Greens.
The game was a very tight affair with neither team managing to take a convincing lead at any point. Panathinaikos had some problems in attack, but Chris Singleton provided the solutions with consecutive three-pointers, one of which coming from the halfway line to beat the buzzer in the first half.
The two teams were neck-and-neck with Panathinaikos leading 50-47 for the last time. A partial 10-1 score put the Istanbul team in front and it never looked back, winning the game by more than the two points it had lost in Athens.
It was once again proven that when James Gist is on a bad night (1/5 field goals, 0/2 free throws), Panathinaikos loses. Singleton notched up 14 points and collected 12 rebounds while Nick Calathes scored 13.
In the Basketball Champions League PAOK scored a precious 90-81 win over French champion Elan Chalon and AEK beat Rosa Radom 69-63 away.
