Olympiacos avoided its first three-game losing streak in almost two years, and you could hear the sigh of relief all the way from the ancient Port of Piraeus.
Reds righted their ship early against feisty Bayern
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Regular Season
Round 13 of 34
Group Regular Season
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What started as a rousing renunciation of mediocrity took on an odd patina Olympiacos Piraeus finally shook off undermanned but determined FC Bayern Munich to take a much-needed 77-69 victory at home in Peace and Friendship Stadium on Friday.
The courtside comments of the winners said it all.
"It wasn't our best performance," said Thomas Walkup, the best performer for the Reds.
"We got a little bit complacent," his partner Alec Peters added.
"It was a very strange game," their head coach, Georgios Bartzokas, would say.
The Reds came into Friday with a 6-6 record, huddled in the middle of the standings after never dropping lower than sixth all last season. It was the first time that their record had been even or worse since October of 2020, when they were 3-3 before going on a four-win streak. Since then they had enjoyed winning records consistently, until losing at home to Real Madrid on Tuesday, that one coming on the heels of a road defeat at AS Monaco in Round 11.
Worse still, the loss to Real gave Olympiacos a 4-3 home record and Bayern was arriving on a three-game winning streak. However, the visitors announced right before the game that star center Serge Ibaka would not play, news that seemed to deflate Bayern and boost the hosts. Olympiacos blasted off to a 13-2 lead before 5 minutes had elapsed, almost doubled that to 39-18 late in the second quarter, and sustained double-digit leads for what seemed like forever.
However, the Reds could not completely shake Bayern, whose bench players decided that it was their opportunity to do something special, and would outscore the starters 43-26 in trying to prove it. A couple of them – Ivan Kharchenkov and Nelson Weidemann – were so new to the task that neither had even been to the free throw line in a EuroLeague game before Friday.
But despite trailing by 21 in that second quarter, the visitors actually won it 17-21. Then they won the third quarter by 2 points, and soon they were taking the fourth, too. A lead that had persistently hovered above 10 points suddenly dropped to just six. Bayern's Elias Harris, who hadn't played in more than a month due to injury, scored 6 points in 35 seconds to make it 75-69 with 37 seconds remaining, leaving the denizens of Peace and Friendship a tad nervous.
Alas, Bayern missed a layup when it could no longer afford to and Walkup solved things at the free throw line. And after such an unusual game, it was the winners who were talking silver linings.
"We got ourselves out to a wonderful lead, and then we dropped some, but I will never complain about a win in the EuroLeague, especially with the standings being so tight," Walkup said..
"We were ready to finish the game early, but Bayern scored 12 or 15 points at the end of the shot clock," Bartzokas noted. "We finally won with a kind of reasonable difference, but there is no easy game in the EuroLeague."
"It's great to win a game in the EuroLeague at all, especially at home," Peters concluded. "We'll take it, but there's a lot to learn from it."
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