The Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul center played a pivotal role in his team grabbing the win.
Papagiannis came up big in crunch time to down Olympiacos
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Regular Season
Round 6 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul center Johnathan Motley committed his fifth foul of the game with 4:47 left on the clock against Olympiacos Piraeus and the score 69-66 in the hosts’ favor. Just as things seemed to be going south for Fenerbahce, up stepped Georgios Papagiannis.
The Greek center, who was on 7 points by that point, came off the bench for the final minutes of the game to try and halt an Olympiacos comeback attempt, with the visitors having trailed by as many as 16 in the first half.
Nikola Milutinov tied the game, 71-71, for the first time with 3:35 to go, but Papagiannis stepped up and drilled a big triple on the other end. However, Nigel Williams-Goss responded with a crucial three-pointer, 74-74, with 2:27 remaining, forcing Fenerbahce head coach Dimitris Itoudis to call a timeout.
Papagiannis to the rescue
When his team needed him most, Papagiannis came to the fore and dunked off a Marko Guduric alley-oop pass before stealing the ball on the other end. In the space of a few seconds, he sank his third triple of the night for a 79-74 Fenerbahce lead with 1:10 remaining.
The Turkish side’s big man ended up finishing the game with a team-high 15 points, having gone 3-for-3 on two-pointers – all of which were dunks off alley-oops passes – and 3-of-5 on triples.
Heading into Thursday’s duel, Papagiannis had gone an impressive 6-for-7 from downtown, making him a huge threat for any opponent both from behind the arc and in the paint.
“When us bigs have the freedom to shoot, it opens up space for everybody in the basket,” Papagiannis said in the post-game flash interview. “We have really good chemistry passing to each other. Of course, we made some mistakes, but we are going to look forward and learn from our mistakes.”
Coach Itoudis focused on Papagiannis’s defense
As Itoudis stressed afterward, Papagiannis also stood out on the other end as his contribution on defense was crucial in the last few minutes of the contest. After all, in addition to his 15 points, the former Panathinaikos Athens star grabbed a couple of rebounds to go with 2 steals and 1 assist, while he had zero turnovers.
“Today, Papagiannis needs an extra applause,” Itoudis stated. “He was big on both ends. Not only scoring-wise, because he played great defense and rebounded the ball and was intimidating with his verticality and his length, trying to challenge all the shots and all the layups.”
Papagiannis’s PIR of 19 is his highest of the season, despite having scored 15 points both against Panathinaikos and EA7 Emporio Armani Milan as well.
It has to be noted that in crunch time he was assigned with the task of facing Milutinov, whose average PIR of 20.2 was the sixth best in EuroLeague heading into this game. Nevertheless, the Greece international delivered on both ends, making a big impact down the final stretch.
After recording its fourth straight victory, Fenerbahce's next game is on the road at Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade next Thursday night, with Itoudis once again coming up against his mentor, Zeljko Obradovic.
