[InTime Sports]
Panathinaikos bid farewell to the dream of winning its eighth Euroleague title at its home Final Four, as it lost at Valencia with an 81-64 score on Wednesday.
The result means that Valencia has won the best-of-five playoffs 3-2 and will contest the Athens Final Four later this month, where Olympiakos will be Greece’s sole representative.
Valencia had the lead for almost the entire game in Spain, except for a brief spell in the second quarter. Just when the Greens had edged ahead 17-16, Valencia scored a partial 19-1 to lead 35-18 and impose itself on the Greeks.
In the second half Panathinaikos got several points from the bench that helped the team recover and cut its distance up to six points, but that was about as close as it could get to a fightback for the Greens.
Valencia kept on going and won the game with relative ease in the end, taking advantage of Panathinaikos’ weak points.
The Greens had problems with rebounds, with the hosts having twice as many offensive ones as the visitors, while many layups were missed.
Another problem was the hopeless insistence on triples, that in the first half fetched just two in 15 shots. Improvement in distance shooting in the second half was not enough.