It was a hursh loss for Union Olimpija at home against Maccabi Tel Aviv. Coach Jure Zdovc got ejected after he contested the play of Alan Anderson getting a foul and scoring the basket against Matt Walsh mid-way in the second quarter.
Olimpija tried to fight back in the third and early in the fourth period but finally sucumbed to Maccabi's deeper bench as the had already commited 10 fouls in the second period.
Olimpija was up by 6 (26-20) in the second quarter, when Alan Anderson got the ball in the low post and scored a basket while getting fouled by Matt Walsh. It was then when coach Zdovc exploded and the arena went wild. The reason is that Anderson clearly commited a travelling violation before that (of course the hosts also have complaints about several calls before that). Objects (mostly paper cups) fell on the floor and the arena had to be sweeped, while Jure Zdovc after repeated complaints got ejected with two technical fouls.
Maccabi run a 15-0 sidescore to get ahead by 9. In an already aggitated arena Olimpija fought back to take the lead in the second half, but were outlasted by the deeper bench of the guests.
Coach Zdovc could not let this situation go without a comment of course.
"Its hard to be focused and smart after such game. I apologize for my ejection. Although I still don't know why I got the tehnical foul. I don't know what I did wrong. Some referees think that they are gods. This is just not acceptable by me. I experienced such behaviour from the refs already at the Eurobasket and now again.
Coaches have the right to ask what their players did wrong on court.
All in all we didnt play aggresive enough. We were falling down at every pick they made and they scored a lot of baskets because of that. I think that after my ejection we didnt play good. My players woke up at halftime and played as I wanted in third quarter, we caught Maccabi and even led for a while but at the end Maccabi used its long bench. They have much more quality players in rotation, and then our system broke down We let Maccabi score easy baskets and we played too individually. I think that result is not fair because it does not show the situation on court. At the end we had too few players who came into the rythem to surprise them." said Zdovc
