No promises of peace and friendship

Famous Peace and Friendship Stadium of Pireause is ready to become the arena of group leaders’ battle. Our team went to Greece today with hopes of breaking Olympiakos home winning streak.

The team was not able to board OrenAir (CSKA Official Carrier Aeroflot daughter airline) plane in full strength again. Victor Khryapa practices individually in Moscow and Aaron Jackson joined him after leg injury sustained in recent game against Lokomotiv.

“We face a very good team that has 4-1 record and won two road games already,” Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach, said. “Olympiacos has many athletic players, they play all-court aggressive defense, which shrinks the floor for the opponents. Spanoulis remains the leader of the team who makes his teammates better. He is able to establish team offense but still ready to decide the game by himself when their secondary options don’t work, as he did against Fenerbahce-Ulker and Laboral Kutxa. Other backcourt guys like Mantzaris and Lafayette are playing well recently as does Spanoulis’ substitute Sloukas. Olympiakos also have excellent bigs Dunston and Hunter who dive on pick-n-rolls and play above the rim. Darden helps with his experience of playing on highest level, Printezis and Petway can play in the post and face to the basket and Lojeski is a great economic 6-man who influences the result without taking many shots. So basically Olympiacos has 2-3 quality players on every position. We expect it to be difficult and we know that we have to play in one of the hottest arenas in Europe. At the same time I hope to hear some applause to Hines who helped to bring the Euroleague trophy to Pireaus and Teodosic who also had some great seasons over there. We know that we have to stay focused for 40 minutes to win there.”

“Relativity” connections

Teodosic spent four seasons with Olympiacos early in his career between 2007 and 2011. He won the 2010 Euroleague MVP, helped the Reds to a pair of Final Four appearances and was a teammate of current Olympiacos players Vassilis Spanoulis, Georgios Printezis, Kostas Sloukas and Dimitrios Katsivelis.

Kyle Hines spent two seasons with Olympiacos from 2011 through 2013 and helped the Reds win back-to-back Euroleague titles. He was a teammate there of five current Olympiacos players: Vassilis Spanoulis, Georgios Printezis, Kostas Sloukas, Vaneglis Printezis and Dimitrios Katsivelis.

Olympiakos head coach Giannis Sfairopoulos was an assistant to Jonas Kazlauskas in 2011-12 season for CSKA.

Important numbers

CSKA Euroleagus winning streak currently stays at 15. The record (17 wins in a row) is also held by the Army Men and it dates back to 2004-05 season.

Milos Teodosic leads the league this season in assists with an average of 7.6 per game.

Teodosic has scored in double figures and made at least 1 three-pointer in 10 consecutive Euroleague games.

Sonny Weems has made at least 1 three-pointer in 11 straight Euroleague games, Andrey Vorontsevich – in 9.

Vorontsevich has made 12 consecutive free throws in Euroleague games.

Kaun has blocked at least 1 shot in eight of the last nine Euroleague games.

Nando De Colo has recorded at least 1 steal in 10 straight Euroleague games.

Olympiacos has won 11 straight Euroleague games at Peace and Friendship Stadium. The last team to beat the Reds in Piraeus was EA7 Milan in last season’s Top 16.

Olympiacos leads the Euroleague in defensive points allowed with a league-low 69.7 points per game.