Olympiacos — CSKA, 15 May 2015

Our team controlled the Euroleague semifinal game through 36 minutes. The last 4 minutes were enough for Spanoulis to turn it to Olympiacos favor.

Olympiacos (Piraeus) vs. CSKA: 70-68 (-2)

Olympiacos: Petway (5 + 4 rb + 3 to), Hunter (2), Dunston (5 + 5 rb + 4 pf), Spanoulis (13 + 3 st + 4 to), Papapetrou (9 + 4 pf), Sloukas (10), Printezis (14 + 8 rb + 4 as + 3 to), Agravanis (2 + 4 rb), Mantzaris (5 + 4 as), Lafayette (3), Lojeski (2 + 3 rb)…

CSKA: De Colo (18 + 4 rb + 4 as), Teodosic (8 + 3 rb + 5 as + 6 to + 4 pf), Jackson (9 + 7 st), Weems (9 + 4 rb + 4 as), Vorontsevich (5 + 5 rb + 3 bs), Kaun (11 + 4 rb), Khryapa (2 + 2 bs), Hines (1 + 4 rb), Kirilenko (5 + 5 rb)…

Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:

Obviously for us it was a bad result, a bad loss. We would say that we opened the game controlling the tempo at both ends. Olympiacos made the comeback and took the lead. We managed to get to plus 9. That period, even though they went small, we knew we had the advantage because we had good ball handlers. That’s why we kept the big lineup, to have the rebounding advantage.
The big shots by Spanoulis decided the game and some small details. If you look at the rankings – 88-71 – they say about what kind of job we did. We need to be focused, we need to step up and continue to fight. I’m not going to lie, we expected more. We wanted to be in the final, to win the trophy. So we are upset. But we all win and lose together. We can only promise the fans who came to Madrid, to our management and sponsors that we will continue to work and try to give them happiness in the future.

Aaron Jackson, CSKA Moscow guard:

We played a good game during 37 minutes. I think our team did a very good job. I did what I supposed to do and what the team needed me to do. Spanoulis just stole the game. The worst thing it happened again and now it’s two times.

Andrey Kirilenko, CSKA forward:

I think it was a good game till the third quarter. We had a good lead, tactically we made a couple of tough and wrong decisions. It’s easy to judge after the game where we made mistakes but during the game it’s hard to keep your head clear. Spanoulis was great today, we knew that he would be very active. In the first half we were concentrated on him.