Jasikevicius: “Olympiacos has a bunch of new plays” 0

Zalgiris faces off against Olympiacos on Tuesday evening in front of their home fans, and the team’s head coach Sarunas Jasikevicius traditionally spoke to the media before the upcoming EuroLeague battle.

Jasikevicius talked about the changes in the Olympiacos camp with the arrival of Georgios Bartzokas, highlighting the number of new plays implemented.

“They’ve got a bunch of new plays. The ideas remain the same, with the same guys involved. Spanoulis will have the ball a lot. Perhaps with Cherry gone, Baldwin’s role might have changed.

But still, it will be Spanoulis, Milutinov, their shooters, and Rochestie playing with the ball. The offense adjusted a bit to fit better to the players.”

Saras confirmed that the main changes in Olympiacos play can be seen offensively.

“Mostly yeah. Defensively with Milutinov they play less aggressively, or switch at some moment. The defense hasn’t changed too much.”

“We need rhythm, we need aggressiveness. They’ve got a lot of talent, and we need to play aggressively, our own, fast-paced basketball. We need to know what to risk on, what not to. There isn’t too many places to risk, since the team has a lot of great shooters. We have to stress Vezenkov’s role. It increased with Bartzokas. It’s a serious team.”

It was also recently confirmed that Olympiacos will have to deal without a key player Georgios Printezis. However, Jasikevicius believes the opponents’ substitutes are fully capable of filling in for him.

“I don’t know what’s been going on with his health recently. Rubit was starting against Baskonia, Vezenkov plays the four spot a lot. It seems he’s not doing too well, and they want to get him healthy. Vezenkov and Rubit are doing a good job filling in.”

Speaking of his own team’s progress, Jasikevicius highlighted the improvements in shooting, but also drew attention to some other aspects.

“I think there are a lot of things that are decided by details. Perhaps we give out less free points, we make more shots. You can’t deny that we’re just making more threes, making it easier. You can never guarantee to make them, but we can make sure that our defense and detail completion remains.”