We were hungry

Panionios was just unlucky. It's fighting mood which allowed three out of four previous Euroleague games met with the hunger of CSKA which could not make it to the Top 16 in Milan. The stunning defeat was easy and logical.

CSKA vs. Panionios: 93-61
Ettore Messina:

“I am very happy that today my players were able to prepare for the game very seriously, especially considering the fact that we lost Siskauskas to injury on the first minute of Monday practice. We played well against the full court pressure that put us in trouble in the second half of the game in Milan and in the parts of the game in Belgrade. Overall I am satisfied with all my players but the person who helped them to play so good was Victor Khryapa – he was just excellent on both halves of the court. And note that today he again played a lot of time on small forward position which was logical because of Siskauskas injury. I am happy that even playing two position this last days Victor is showing good consistency.

The team we just defeated won in three out of four games in Euroleague and its only loss was in Milan by two point – and you know that we lost in Milan too. So we have all the respect to our opponent and I am happy that we managed to play good against their aggressive defense.”

Alexander Trifunovic:

“Today we played way below average. With the game like this we can not hope to win not only against such a great team like CSKA but against any team in Euroleague. I understand that our problem lays mostly in the area of psychology. We just did not play on those level which allowed us to be competitive in the previous games. Looking at the stats sheet I see very unusual thing – 21 turnovers. And remember that we have 12 in average in Euroleague, and we were on the third place in this category. We played bad from the very beginning, missing shots, forgetting some simple defensive rules. CSKA got the well-deserved win. We hope to learn from our mistakes and to make our dream to get to Top 16 come true”.