Very easy night for Panathinaikos in OAKA, who pulled away from Unicaja Malaga from the very beginning of the game and never looked back.
Zeljko Obradovic ordered his players to take advantage of Unicaja’s thin frontline from second one and that was exactly what The Greens did. Batiste already registered seven points in under five minutes while Fotsis was controlling the boards. After Unicaja took the lead 7-8 Panathinaikos took charge of the game and after 12-8 run a partial score of 14-5 to end the first quarter with double score, 26-13.
In the second quarter Freeland got called his fourth foul and sat on the bench and Unicaja lost control of the boards and blocks. Obradovic rested Diamantidis for the first time in the game, but Panathinaikos kept pushing Unicaja and the score became 35-19. The maximum difference reached twenty one points at one point and the half time score was 45-25.
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In the second half Sato and Perperoglou took care of the scoring whereas Unicaja just barely tried to maintain the difference at twenty points. Nonetheless the Spanish side just could not find its way to Panathinaikos basket and the third quarter ended with score being 68-39.
In the last quarter both coaches gave playing time to their bench players and the points difference fluctuated around twenty points. Panathinaikos got their biggest lead of the game at 82-52 but Unicaja scored four unanswered points for the final score 82-56.
Before the game started Panathinaikos BC president Pavlos Giannakopoulos awarded Dimitris Diamantidis for his Euroleague December MVP achievement, as seen in the picture above.
Panathinaikos: Tepic 4, Perperoglou 10, Batiste 12, Fotsis 8, Sato 9, Nicholas 9, Tsartsaris 14, Diamantidis 4, Vouyoukas 6, Calathes 6, Bogris, Zoubos
Unicaja: Rodriguez 5, Freire, Printezis 7, Almazan 5, Jimenez 7, Blakney 10, Sinanovic 5, Rubio 4, Freeland 11, Garcia, Blanco 2
