Zalgiris and Olympiacos, two of the hottest EuroLeague teams, collide at Zalgirio Arena on Friday night.
Here comes big Kaunas showdown with winning streaks on the line
![Here comes big Kaunas showdown with winning streaks on the line](https://media-cdn.incrowdsports.com/d09b03b8-4af5-4a2a-9535-722ea9216ee5.jpg?crop=2842%3A1599%3Anowe%3A158%3A0)
A beautiful venue in Kaunas has been sold out for more than a month for the showdown between Zalgiris Kaunas (11-15) and Olympiacos Piraeus (15-11), two teams that come into this game with the intention of continuing the success they had just before the February break.
Both sides are on three-game winning streaks and both have won four of their last five games. These runs have put Zalgiris and Olympiacos in position to make one final run and accomplish their goals set before the season. That finishing run starts on Friday.
For Zalgiris, the goal in question is reaching the postseason. The Lithuanian champion had a 5-12 record at the end of 2023 when the club parted ways with Kazys Maksvytis and appointed Andrea Trinchieri as a new head coach. Under Trinchieri, Zalgiris has won six of its last nine games and has won all four on its home floor. Each of its last three home wins has come by at least 12 points and by an average margin of 20.3 points.
Keenan Evans has stepped up tremendously since Trinchieri's arrival, posting 19.4 points and averaging 3.3 three-pointers made on an impressive 51.7% three-point shooting. Only two players in the league have scored more and only three players have made more than Evans's 30 three-pointers in 2024.
Up-and-coming center Laurynas Birutis has been the only other player under Trinichieri posting in double figures (10.8 ppg.), while Rolands Smits (9.7 ppg.), Edgaras Ulanovas (8.6 ppg.) and Brady Manek (8.4 ppg.) have made significant scoring contributions. For comparison, in the first half of the regular season, only two players (Evans with 15.9 ppg. and Smits with 12.5 ppg.) scored more than 8.4 points per game.
But what the team has also done is step up on the defensive end. In four home games since the coaching change, Zalgiris has not allowed more than 72 points in any, averaging 70.3 per game, all while scoring 87.8 on average in those four.
Now, that offense will get tested against the EuroLeague's best scoring defense as no team has allowed fewer points this season than Olympiacos (75.2 ppg.).
Unlike Zalgiris, which has used its home court to make a run and catch up in the playoff race, the Reds used back-to-back road wins, in Valencia and in Munich, to get back in the race for home-court advantage in the playoffs.
The only Olympiacos loss since mid-January was a 90-85 road defeat against league-leading Real Madrid. During that span, Olympiacos had injury problems with their big men as Moustapha Fall and then Nikola Milutinov went down with injuries. Each player appeared only once in this five-game span, but that did not stop the Reds as the team put its depth on display to keep rolling.
Kostas Papanikolaou, the EuroLeague all-time leader with 299 career starts, moved into a role off the bench and has averaged 9.0 points on 47.8% three-point shooting with 2.6 assists, while Filip Petrusev contributed with 7.3 points and 4.0 rebounds and former Zalgiris star Ignas Brazdeikis with 7.3 points and 3.0 rebounds. Each of these three players improved his scoring averages by at least 3 points during this five-game stretch.
Those, of course, are in addition to Alec Peters, who is playing the best basketball of his career (14.3 ppg., 5.1 rpg.), and Isaiah Canaan (12.7 ppg., 46.6% 3FG) helping lead the way. And it was those two - Canaan with 25 points and Peters with 22 - who led Olympiacos to an 89-72 win over Zalgiris in Round 10.
A lot has changed and happened since, but Olympiacos is right where it wants to be with eight games to go. A win in Kaunas would give the Reds a massive push in the playoff race and Coach Georgios Bartzokas's men are certainly determined to get the job done.
However, the super-confident hosts at the packed Zalgirio Arena will have plenty to say in this one.