'No room for favorites'

May 21, 2013

Stratos Perperoglou - Panathinaikos_38098

Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well… I am sure that you are looking forward for the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four tip off… We sure are! We are marching towards the end of our preparations for the semifinal against CSKA Moscow. We are all ready; Mike Batiste is back after recovering from his injury and we have been spending a lot of time at OAKA.

We have spent some time watching video, but we work a lot on the court too in order to prepare ourselves for the games to come in the best possible way. Our coaches have done everything to prepare us as far as scouting goes. We have a very difficult mission ahead, but in a Euroleague semifinal there is no room for favorites.

CSKA has a full roster. Its road through this Euroleague season was steady and we know that we have to do our best in order to claim a positive result. It’s a tough mission for sure, but we are optimistic. We believe in our team and our potential and we’ll do the best we can to get to the final.

We have the chance to defend our title and we want to defend our title. We have a lot of players that have been to at least one Final Four in the past, so we know what we have to do. But we are not the only team out of the four with experienced players. CSKA has players who know well what the Final Four means and the same goes for Barcelona and Olympiacos. I believe that we can handle this situation and that we can react to circumstances during the game. Our coaches made the game plan and we will follow it the best way possible.

I believe that this year we are looked upon differently than other years, since nobody has us pinned us as favorites. Last year after ruling out Barcelona, we were automatically pronounced as the favorites to win at the Final Four. Even in Berlin for many people we were the favorites. This year the situation is not the same. But all this is just extra motivation for us and we hope that we’ll be able to defend our title. I think that those who believe in us most are our fans. They have believed in us from day one, which we knew to be true and could see since they bought tickets for the Final Four early in the season. They want more titles, they want to celebrate again, they believe in the team. That’s something this team has earned through the years; the fans follow us everywhere and stand by this team through good and bad days. We hope to make them happy once more in Turkey…

So… I hope to see you there… Till then, take care of yourselves and your loved ones…

POSTED BY

stratos perperoglou - athens

DATE:

Wednesday, May 09, 2012