Pascual: “We lost the control”

The head coach of Panathinaikos Superfoods, Xavi Pascual, stated after the game against Fenerbahce:

"First of all, thank you to our fans for coming here to help us. I think it is very clear - we played normal basketball for 20 minutes. We didn't play well the first 5 minutes, started the game nervous, without good defense or good offense. After 6-12, we changed and had control of the game, played better at both ends, more or less until the 24th minute. After that, we lost control of everything - defense, offense... everything started with offense, because we played very bad. Fenerbahce scored 11 points on fast breaks and changed the game because of our bad offense, clearly. This is why we lost. The best team doesn't win the playoffs, but the team which is mentally stronger. Fenerbahce was mentally stronger than us - when it was down by 16, it believed it could win. When Fenerbahce started to recover, we stopped playing and didn't follow our rules on defense. We lost control of our emotions and this is why we lost. Fenerbahce was confident and hit every shot while we lost our confidence and were not able to get organized on offense. We know that we have a new opportunity on Thursday. We have to prepare the game well, get ready mentally. This is just 1-0 and whoever wants to win the series needs three wins. We will try to play good games and if we do, we will have our chances to win."