Ivan Kolev

For the first time in the Euro Basketball League, Panathinaikos won the cup for the fifth time. In one beautiful game, the green ones won against the team from Moscow with 73:71 and this way created a golden page in the European sport history. The full hall created great atmosphere, which suited the exceptional final.

In order to get to this final, the clovers needed to play a relatively calm game, in which at moments they were 23 points ahead. By the end, the game turned out to be a thriller, in which Ramounas Siskaouskas missed the last shot.

At the beginning of the game, CSKA set its own rhythm and was leading but this continued only for few minutes. During the fourth minute of the game, Panathinaikos lead with 13:12 and did not allow the Russians even to equalize the score by the end. The red ones tried three fruitless attacks and this discouraged them.

Mesina bet on the zone defense but later on this came out to be the wrong strategy, because the green ones were very good shooters. They managed to score six threes and the difference reached 23 points in the second half – 56:33.

The red ones managed to score a series of 13 points in made the result 56:46.

The tension at the beginning of the fourth part was bigger. The green ones felt the Russian’s breath in their necks and this is when the star of Perperoglou rose, who was very accurate and brought the score to 65:52.

In an answer to this, Mesina out in the game Siskaouskas and he brought the result to 70:69. Diamantis managed to stay calm and the result reached 72:69. After that Siskaouskas brought the result to 72:71. In the rest 8.5 seconds, CSKA tried to win the game but Panathinaikos was the lucky team.

Panathinaikos (coach Jelko Obradovich): Spanoulis, Perperoglou, Batist, Fostis, Nikolas, Tsartsaris, Diamandidis, Pekovich, Yasikevich

CSKA (coach Etore Mesina): Zisis, Smodis, Siskaouskas, Holden, Lorbeck, Langton, Kawn, Kriapa, Planinich, Moris