Sarunas Jasikevicius, the head coach of Fenerbahce, spoke at the postgame press conference following the loss to Olympiacos.
With this defeat, Fenerbahce will not advance to the EuroLeague Final and will not have the opportunity to defend the title they won last season, after suffering a convincing 79-61 loss.
(VIDEO) Olympiacos crushes Fenerbahce to reach EuroLeague Final
“Congratulations to Bartzokas and Olympiacos, they were clearly the better team tonight. Unfortunately, we had a full roster and played our worst game of the season. It hurts me to see us play like this. The numbers at the beginning of the quarters are tragic.
You have to come out with aggression and throw the first punch. We knew we had to do that last year, but instead we got punched first in the opening minutes.
Every time we tried to come back, we could not. Every time we found some life, they took it away from us. It was a bad afternoon for us and unfortunately it happened on the biggest stage. When you shoot that quickly on every possession, that is not basketball.
I said that Olympiacos played like Olympiacos. I am satisfied with our defense, but offensively we were very poor. We forced things too much. Olympiacos played very well, but at the same time we were also very bad. I do not want to take anything away from Olympiacos, they were the much better team tonight.
I do not know how to explain it exactly. We rushed too many shots. If we had done the right things offensively, we would have been more patient. We did not play our game. Against a team like this, you cannot afford to lose your identity. It will be interesting to see the percentage of open shots because I have not looked at it yet.
Olympiacos did exactly what we expected them to do. We played far below our potential. Now we need to understand why this happened and finish the season strong.
Everyone knows who De Colo is, one of the greatest. We could talk about him for hours. Look at his last EuroLeague game, he was the only player with a positive plus-minus. An amazing career.
Olympiacos does not change the way they think or play. It is very difficult to take them out of their habits. As terrible as we were, we still found ways to come back three different times. But every single time, they were simply much more solid than us.
As for the fans, I read the newspapers and social media, but people do not win games. I know many Fenerbahce fans were unable to enter the arena even though they had purchased tickets. I feel bad for them. We were talking about it before the game because many of them were waiting outside the arena for confirmation emails. Last night I was at a restaurant and people were telling me they still did not have tickets. It is not a good situation.” said Sarunas Jasikevicius.
“If people pay this amount of money, they make an effort, and they cannot get into the arena, that’s very sad, and I feel bad for the Fener fans,” he added.
“Because this is what we were talking about before the game, that many of them were outside waiting for some kind of email or something.
By the way, I was in the restaurant with many of my friends last night at 11 o’clock, and we had no tickets. So the people started asking, ‘Saras, are we going to have tickets?’ This is not a good situation for the EuroLeague for sure, and it’s sad.”
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