Greece lost to Spain after a cliffhanger on Tuesday in the Olympic Games making their matchup with Australia a must-win situation.
Greece erased a 16-point Spanish lead from the first half, tied the score with four minutes left, but Spain prevailed in a thrilling finish.
A crowd of 27,000 fans stood in awe as Sergio Scariolo’s team picked up an 84-77 win, taking them to 1-1, while dropping Greece to 0-2.
Spain played an incredible first half, powered by Sergio Llull’s three three-pointers, including his trademark mandarina shot over Giannis Antetokounmpo to open up a 16-point lead at one point late in the second quarter.
However, Greece aren’t going away that easily, especially if Giannis Antetokounmpo has something so say about it.
His inside finishing, plus Vasilis Toliopoulos knocking down four three-pointers, brought the gap all the way back to 71-69, when Giannis powered in for a slam over Santi Aldama to tie the game with 4:30 left.
But that only got Spain going, because they held Greece scoreless for the next three minutes, none other than Aldama being the one who got the big putback dunk himself to make it 79-71 Spain with 2:05 on the game clock.
Greece had one last push after Kostas Papanikolaou and Giannis Antetokounmpo created a quick 6-1 run, but at 80-77 with 24 seconds to play, Giannis missed a three-pointer for the tie and Spain sealed the deal from the free throw line.
Greece wasted energy to come back against Spain
Coach Vassilis Spanoulis, got another big game by Giannis Antetokounmpo with 27 points, but it wasn’t to be.
That first half -16 hole was too big, and they wasted a lot of energy to come back.
“I think from the 8th to the 20th minute, we did everything wrong,” Greece’s head coach Vasilis Spanoulis told BasketNews‘ Donatas Urbonas postgame.
“And, like against Canada, we were great in the second half. But against Spain, we were really bad for 12 minutes. We made all the mistakes and gave them confidence.
They made some big shots and we stopped moving the ball on offense. In the second half, we played amazing defense. We had a lot of opportunities to take the game. They made big shots. We missed a couple of shots, and that was it,” the 42-year-old play-caller explained.
Spanoulis thinks that Greece’s problems in the second quarter stemmed from his players’ slow reactions.
“We were slow in everything,” he stressed.
“I think we were affected by the pressure because pressure makes you slow. We see that, during the game, we can play amazing defense and good basketball. But to play 25 or 28 or 30 minutes is not enough in this competition. There are good teams and you have to play 40 minutes,” he added.
