The Reds contained a red-hot Francisco by tightening their defense to clinch fourth straight win
Olympiacos’s defense fueled second-half comeback at Zalgiris
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Regular Season
Round 19 of 34
Group Regular Season
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Twenty minutes into Thursday’s game at Zalgirio Arena, everything indicated that 2025 would not start on a positive note for Olympiacos Piraeus.
Boosted by the ever-buzzing home crowd, Zalgiris Kaunas hit the ground running, with Sylvain Francisco cooking on offense. The hosts fired on all cylinders, making 11 of 17 (64.7%) from beyond the arc, with Francisco going 5-for-6 from deep. The Zalgiris guard ended the first half on 20 points - just 2 points shy from his career high in the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Zalgiris led 52-40 at halftime, but a visit to the locker room was enough for Olympiacos to regroup and change the chip on both ends.
"In the first half, they did whatever they wanted," game MVP Sasha Vezenkov told EuroLeague TV after the game. "They scored 52 points. Yes, they scored tough shots, but we were not physical and didn’t open the game as we wanted to."
The Reds flipped the switch after the break, with Vezenkov netting 19 of his game-high 24 points in the last two quarters. Olympiacos may have outscored Zalgiris 33-52 after the break, but it was its defense that allowed the visitors to complete the comeback.
"I think that in the second half, we had our best defensive game so far this season," Vezenkov added. "We said that even if we’re losing by 12 points, we can win this game possession by possession. We played tough, put pressure on the two handlers that Zalgiris have and are really talented and I think we played a great second half to win the game."
In fact, Francisco scored just 2 points in the second half, where he went 1-for-2 from inside the rainbow and 0-for-4 from downtown. Olympiacos’s solid defense forced him to 3 second-half turnovers, with Zalgiris finishing the game with 19 errors.
"It really started with our defense in the second half and that gave us flow and rhythm on defense and that turned into flow and rhythm on offense," Thomas Walkup, who netted a season-high 13 points including a big triple on crunch time, told EuroLeague TV.
More importantly, Olympiacos made the most of Zalgiris’s mistakes by netting 33 points off turnovers. Physicality on the defensive end of the floor and a tactical switch by head coach Georgios Bartzokas allowed Olympiacos to extend its winning streak to four games.
"The defense was completely different in the second half,” Bartzokas said in the post-game press conference. "[We had] more physicality. We changed some tactical things like [introducing] hedge-out instead of switching defense in every screen with the 4 and then they missed lots of shots. They made 3 triples in the second half and the last one was when the game was over."
Having opened 2025 with a hard-fought road victory, Olympiacos will look to extend its unbeaten streak with a potential home win against FC Bayern Munich. One of the finest offenses in the league is set to visit the Reds next week, but in this second-half defensive effort against Zalgiris, Olympiacos has the blueprint that should be followed against the Germans.