Aris Midea Thessaloniki ended a seven-year hiatus by returning to the BKT EuroCup this season and on Wednesday night the club ended another wait and got its first win in more than seven years. Aris battled hard and held on for a 68-66 victory over the visiting Turk Telekom Ankara.
"Our team gave everything, we hustled on defense ," game-hero Vassilis Toliopoulos summed up after the game. He finished with 22 points, making 4 of 11 triples and also collecting 5 rebounds and 4 assists to help Aris celebrate a deserved victory.
"We can simply say our guys invested their hearts tonight and we capitalized that with a great win," Aris head coach Ioannis Kastritis added.
Aris got the job done with its defense. After allowing more than 80 points in each of the first two games of the season, the Greek team not only held Turk Telekom to 66 points, but held the visitors below 40% shooting on both twos and threes. Turk Telekom was 38.9% on two-point shots, and 34.8% behind the arc.
"We know that our defense is a key factor for us," Kastritis said. "This is our standard, this is what we want to base our philosophy on, and our guys did a great job tonight."