The hosts were held to just 21 second-half points thanks to the Greek side's impressive play on defense.
Second-half defensive hustle was the key to Aris’s win at Slask
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Aris Midea Thessaloniki took a 42-43 lead into the halftime break at Hala Orbita, but head coach Ioannis Kastritis was anything but pleased by his team’s performance on defense.
At halftime against Slask Wroclaw, Kastritis asked his players to be more aggressive, suggesting they should avoid allowing the hosts to get easy baskets and open looks. This is exactly what Aris did after the interval to secure a 63-80 win, its second straight triumph and its first on the road, on Wednesday night.
The guests were in control of the game in the first quarter, but they allowed Slask to score 26 points in the second. However, everything changed after halftime, as Aris players did exactly what they were asked to do on the defensive end and delivered a solid display on the court.
“We just had to follow the game plan,” Roberto Gallinat, Aris’s top scorer, said afterward. “We wanted to keep them under 70 [points] and they got 63 so I feel that we did a good job, but we still have to improve in some areas.”
Going up another level on defense
Aris gave up just 21 points throughout the second half. In fact, Slask scored just 2 points in the first 5 minutes of the third quarter, netting its first points from the field with 4:48 left on the clock. In total, Slask scored 10 points in the third quarter, one fewer than its scoring tally in the fourth.
“I think that we can be very satisfied with our second half,” Coach Kastritis commented. “On defense, we allowed only 21 points in the second half. So, we played to our standards. We played the way we wanted to play according to our philosophy. I can only give many congratulations to our players for their effort on both ends [of the floor].”
Kind words and capitalizing on turnovers
Aris secured a double-digit lead for the first time just a few seconds into the final quarter; from there, it never looked back. In the post-game press conference, Slask head coach Oliver Vidin was full of praise for Aris’s hustle on defense.
“Congratulations to the opponent,” Vidin noted. “They deserved the win [because of] the great defense they played against us. They had 13 steals and we had a lot of turnovers.”
In fact, 25 of Aris’s 80 points came off turnovers made by the hosts. After holding Turk Telekom Ankara to 66 points at home last week, the Greek side pulled off another solid defensive outing, which it capitalized on to secure its second win in a row.
Aris arrived at Hala Orbita as the team with the worst offense in the BKT EuroCup through the first three games of the season (just 69.3 points scored), but it has proved that its defense could cause headaches for any opponent this season. Perhaps its performance at Slask should serve as a warning to the other teams in Group B.