Coach Vassilis Spanoulis’s side held the Reds to a season-low 10 assists
Monaco’s defensive intensity extinguished Olympiacos’s ball circulation
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Heading into Friday’s semifinal against Olympiacos Piraeus, AS Monaco was aware that it needed to force the Reds out of their comfort zone. The key to the win would be preventing Olympiacos from playing its free-flowing, altruistic basketball based on sharing the ball to find open looks.
Coach Georgios Bartzokas’s side came into the clash against Vassilis Spanoulis’s Monaco boasting a league-high 20.9 assists per game. Yet, Spanoulis had prepared a masterplan that his team’s defense executed to perfection, limiting his former team to a season-low 10 dishes.
Monaco forced Olympiacos to an unfamiliar isolation game, taking out all its weapons on offense by disturbing its ball circulation.
“We wanted to make them feel like an on-ball team tonight,” Daniel Theis explained on the EuroLeague post-game show. “We wanted to make them beat us one-on-one. They are an incredible team when they’re moving the ball. They’ve got so much talent. But we wanted to get that away from them, make them play one-on-one and iso. That’s what we did tonight and that was the result.”
To do so, Monaco relied on an extraordinary Jaron Blossomgame, who had a major contribution in holding Sasha Vezenkov below double digits in scoring (7 points) for the first time this season.
“I think Jaron Blossomgame didn’t leave Sasha Vezenkov’s side all game,” Theis added. “He took him out of his game. We were ready for his movement. He never stopped moving. He doesn’t like to dribble as much, so whenever he catches the ball [Blossomgame] was right there, making him feel uncomfortable all game long. That was a big key to our success today."
Vezenkov barely touched the ball on offense, struggling to find space to execute. Monaco’s defense got under his skin, forcing the MVP candidate to an abysmal 0-for-6 from deep. The Olympiacos forward attempted just 10 field goals, most of which were contested with Monaco piling the pressure on him whenever he tried to find space to receive the ball.
“When we play Monaco basketball, no one can beat us and that’s what we did tonight,” Blossomgame told EuroLeagueBasketball.net. “I just want to impact winning. Whatever that is for my team. Whether it’s defense on their best player like tonight or whether that’s scoring or diving for a loose ball. I want to be that guy for us, impacting the game in a lot of ways.”
Monaco recorded 10 steals, forcing the Reds to 14 turnovers on which they capitalized by scoring 19 points off Olympiacos’s errors.
“We are a good defensive team when we’re locked in,” Mike James stressed after the game. “We’ve got good athletes. We’re physical. We can do a lot of things defensively to disrupt people.”
Monaco’s defensive strategy against Olympiacos worked out well, but a reset might be needed ahead of Sunday's Championship Game against Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul – a team playing another type of basketball.
“Fener are a totally different team than Olympiacos,” Spanoulis admitted in the post-game press conference. “We have to change the chip in our mind and execute a different game plan.”
Yet, what’s certain is that one aspect of Monaco’s game will remain unchanged. And that is the defensive intensity that they utilized to strangle Olympiacos’s offense on Friday night.