The EuroLeague leader strolled to a comfortable home victory after leading throughout the contest
Olympiacos rolls on with smooth win over Partizan, 82-70

Olympiacos Piraeus stayed firmly in the driver’s seat of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague standings and improved to 21-7 in the regular season after cruising to an 82-70 home win over Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade, the club’s 12th in the last 13 games in Europe’s premier club competition.
Having already secured a postseason berth with seven games to spare after some results went its way on Thursday evening, Olympiacos made light of the matchup with Partizan as the Greek giant led from start to finish in a lop-sided contest.
Sasha Vezenkov paced Olympiacos with 17 points and 6 boards but it was Partizan’s former center Nikola Milutinov who claimed the player of the game accolade after racking up 10 points and 9 boards, while Nigel Williams-Goss posted 10 points and 4 assists.
At the other end, Carlik Jones led Partizan on 17 points, Brandon Davies added 14 and captain Vanja Marinkovic chipped in with 12, but Partizan never looked capable of staging an upset as the visitors were devoid of energy and bereft of ideas on offense.
Game Videos
With the home fans in full swing as Olympiacos kicked off celebrations marking the club’s milestone 100th anniversary, the hosts made an early statement of intent and led 27-18 at the end of the first quarter.
Vezenkov led the way on 9 points as a ruthless Olympiacos shot 7 of 9 from inside and dished out 9 assists, with the home team thriving on impeccable movement off the ball on offense and an array of set plays which generated a barrage of easy points.
The trend continued in the second as a 12-2 run saw Olympiacos carve out a massive 37-20 advantage before Partizan enjoyed its brightest spell of the game by producing a 0-8 run. The Greek side responded immediately with a 9-2 streak which resulted in a 46-32 lead at halftime as Olympiacos dominated the paint, too, with Milutinov and fellow big man Moustapha Fall comprising a wall at their end of the court.
Visiting head coach Zeljko Obradovic tried to counter by deploying two bigs at the same time in the third quarter, Davies and Tyrique Jones, but nothing worked for Partizan and the EuroLeague’s most trophy-laden coach seemed resigned to his team’s fate.
Normally energetic and screaming instruction to his players in the heat of battle, Obradovic at one point just sat down on his bench in dismay as Olympiacos kept its foot on the gas and led 64-51 ahead of the final 10 minutes.
Partizan managed to close the gap to 11 points several times in the fourth quarter but Olympiacos always found another gear when it needed to and pulled away to 80-61 in the home stretch, before the visitors slashed the deficit in the last two minutes.
It was too little too late though and Olympiacos ran out a worthy winner after a rock-solid team effort, which saw the home side dish out 25 assists against just 12 turnovers, having also won the battle of the boards 33-27.