Pitino: "To win on the road, you can't just play hard"

The head coach of Panathinaikos BC OPAP, Rick Pitino stated after the game against Olympiacos:

"To win on the road, you have to be 6 or 8 points better in almost every phase of the game, and tonight we were not. This basketball team, as I get to know it, is a little bit challenged offensively right now. They have a difficult time scoring, and if their defense is not great that night, then it makes it even more difficult. I was hesitant to make a lot of offensive changes, but because I think our personnel is such that we can't stand around while four guys watch one play. So we got to get a lot more motion in our offense. I am going have to make some more changes offensively to get some more slashing, more cutting. Because right now, we got dominated in the frontcourt off the glass; none of our bigs even shot a free throw in the game. Deflections were way down. The last two games we averaged 31, and tonight we had 22. We had 10 to 12 steals per game, and we got four tonight. I really believe that the Olympiacos defense pushed us out of our offense almost every possession. You have to attack on offense the same way you attack on defense. And we did not tonight. Our guys have to learn to win on the road, you can’t just cut, go back door. You've got to set your man up and be very, very aggressive. We learned a lot from tonight's game. We got outplayed, but guys played hard. To win on the road, you can't just play hard; you've got to take it a level way above that. For example, we made some mental mistakes tonight, but if I as a coach can get every single guy on the team not to just play hard, but to take to a new level, like Lekavicius; if I can get every single guy on the team to play defense and offense like Lekavicius, even though we can be a little undermanned, and have our weaknesses, we will win. But that's the challenge I am facing."