Home EuroLeague F4 coverage: post-game quotes

F4 coverage: post-game quotes

Dusan Ivkovic stated his happened and dedicated the title to his team’s fans while Kazlauskas admitted that the season has been a failure after losing the final.

When asked by TalkBasket if losing the final condemns the entire season to a failure, CSKA’s coach Jonas Kazlauskas didn’t hesitate to admit it: “Our target is to always win all the competitions we are part of, that was our aim this year too. Of course I don’t know if we had a good enough team to achieve this, but we played good all season long.”

Commentating on Olympiacos he said: “This team is a very dangerous one. They became even more dangerous when they benched Spanoulis and the rest of their players played freely because they had nothing to lose anymore.”

Regarding Siskauskas missed free throws before Printezis bucket the Lithuanian coach admitted it was his order the ball went to the hands of either Siskauskas or Teodosic so they got fouled and took the free throws: “We only made two out of our six free throws, it was obviously a major problem for us.”

As expected, Ivkovic was in a more joyous mood and started the press conference off by thanking the Angelopoulos family for eventually sticking around last summer even though they had decided to quit Olympiacos.

On the final’s MVP Costas Papanikolaou he said: “Papanikolaou was in an extremely good shape lately and he helped us a lot in defense too by limiting players like Mickeal and Kirilenko tonight.”

He compared his team success with the one of Partizan in 1992, who also won the final with a buzzer beater while being the underdogs of the tournament, also in Istanbul.

When asked about about leaving Hines on the floor in the fourth quarter although he had a difficult offensive game he answered: “Hines is a great defender with a great understanding of the game. He tried to be unselfish in some plays and pass, but sadly he committed some turnovers. Let’s not forget he took the entire team on his back after Dorsey’s injury in the series vs Siena. When we signed him I told him he could be the Charles Barkley of European basketball.”

Regarding the teamtalk when Olympiacos was behinf by as much as 19 points: “I told them not to stop, at least take the difference down to 10, then to single digit number and so on… the team was very nervous in the first half and it seems like that our noon cruise in the Bosphorous didn’t do enough to relax them. I really didn’t like the training schedule of the tournament because we had to train at 10 in the morning.”

When he was told that thousands of Olympiacos are out in the streets celebrating in Greece and that even the remaining Panathinaikos fans clapped his team at the arena the Serbian coach said: “We mustn’t stop at this point, we must continue working instead of celebrating and drinking champagne. I am happy for our fans and dedicate this title to them and the Angelopoulos family.”

Closing off he made a wish: “I heard there were fights again outside the arena. I would like to wish both teams’ fans learn how to be true fans and stop all this.”

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