


"I believe the third quarter was obviously the key of this game. We played excellent defense, allowed only 9 points and were very good offensively. After that, we stopped a little bit, however, congratulations to my team, an important win for us. If we talk about defense, the third quarter was one of the best quarters of the season for sure.
"We always try to react in every game, to understand where we make mistakes in the first half and what we can change. I have young assistants doing a great job, and I want to thank them for it. We have a live scout, so when we come into the locker room, we already have certain things prepared from the game we show to the players. So we showed them three situations when we easily allowed points when we actually did not even try to play defense. That's where we started, to be closer to the players, to not allow a single easy shot, and that's how it turned out that third quarter with a phenomenal defense. And we played well offensively, sometimes the energy on defense turns into something really positive on offense.
"We slowed down in the fourth quarter, but I guess it was from the satisfaction that you lead by more than 20 points. ALBA is a good team, they move really well without the ball on offense, and they punish opponents' aggressiveness with backdoor situations, scoring easy points. In the first half, we probably were too afraid of those backdoor cuts, and we let them shoot. Every game is important, no one is qualified, and no teams are eliminated yet. Not to speak about us between the sixth and 14th place, how close we all are."
"Congratulations to Partizan, they played a very good game, especially the second half. With our problems with injuries and sickness with had a different team than we had last week. Partizan played with a very good energy in the third quarter we could not match. We focused too much on the refs, that was very important, and the environment was difficult for us. They were better than us. Sometimes the other team does better than you."
"Not my personal best game, but all that matters is that we got the win. Everyone stepped up in the second half. The third quarter was the key. It was mainly on defense, it was a team effort. We need more wins to get to the top eight. It is a big win for us. Last week we did not finish the job against Fenerbahce, so we had to bounce back today. Now we have a double-week, two games coming, so it was a good way to get confidence for those two games on the road."
"ALBA is a tough team regardless of their effort. They came in and they fought. They tried to make it close at the end, so we had to really make sure to cut down the turnovers and seal the game. They kept fighting but we were able to finish the game and take care of the home court. continue to try to make the push for the top eight places. In the third quarter, we needed to lock in. We wanted to come out strong after the first half, we were down 2 points, so we wanted to make a statement, come out strong, aggressive defensively, and everything else would flow."