Pregame quotes of the CSKA – Panathinaikos matchup

 

 

Dimitry Shakulin: “Three years ago coach Obradovic held a clinic here in Moscow. I remember him saying to the coaches: ‘Here we play pick-and-roll and let me keep secret what we do further.’ Panathinaikos has a great system based on pick-and-rolls, they spread the defense with their passing, they have a number of excellent players at every position, they make you pay for mistakes and force shots. But we know their strengths and we will prepare well. Panathinaikos has played with great desire this season; They made good roster additions with Sato and the unfortunately injured Maric. We are still in the race for the Top 16 and we will try our best to keep the dream of making it alive.”

 

Ramunas Siskauskas: “Everybody knows about our situation. We are in the position where we cannot afford any more losses. It is difficult and we face probably the most dangerous opponent –group favorite Panathinaikos. But we will fight and I hope to provide as much help to the team as I can.”

 

Zeljko Obradovic: “They have a new coach. They will try to play with extra motivation and they will try to show that everything that was bad was because of the coach. In all the teams in the world things happen like this. What we have to do is to be ready for a game that is really necessary for us to play at a high level, better than we played during the last quarter against Valencia, knowing that they are a good team. Knowing that they have quality players and they’ll try hard to get the positive result for sure, because they have the possibility to advance to the Top 16. Nothing is finished. Our group is very difficult for everybody.”

 

Mike Batiste: “It is going to be a difficult game. We know the position that we are in, trying to stay at pace, on top of our group. It’s going to be a difficult game. They replaced one coach so I think it’s a kind of the same situation that Valencia had. Having a new coach may bring different kind of plays, a different kind of system, so we are going to have to be careful and be concentrated for 40 minutes so we can recover from last week’s loss. They are fighting to stay alive, which is a little bit dangerous for us. You know they are going to come in and try to play very, very hard, especially at home, in front of their crowd so we really have to be very careful.”