Ataman: “Grigonis hasn’t trained for three to four days, Juancho will help us significantly”

AKTOR from Panathinaikos trained for France on Wednesday morning (December 13th) before the game against Villeurbanne (December 14th, 10:00 p.m., Novasports Prime and LIVE from Sportish) on the 14th matchday of the EuroLeague. Ergin Ataman spoke about the situation of Marius Grigonis and Juancho Hernangometh and emphasized that the Greens need to make better decisions in the last minutes of the games.

“This is the Euroleague. Sometimes there are series and sometimes there are series. So we don’t look at what happened in the last few games. Every game is different. It’s an important game in this competition. Maybe it’s Villeurbanne.” Not in a good position, but they are a dangerous team. Apart from the last game against Valencia, they have lost the last possession in every game. It will be a difficult and important game because we want to get back to winning ways.

Firstly, we should be more careful about how we end the games. In many games we lost in the last minutes, so we have to control the pace of the game at this point. We definitely have to play well defensively, because offensively we have the quality to react to the game. We have to be aggressive in defense and careful in a 1v1 situation.

Grgigonis hasn’t trained for the last three to four days but we will try in France today. We hope he can play because we definitely need his quality as we don’t have many alternatives with experienced faces in this position.

It is very important that Huatso comes back, because at the moment we have both Mitoglou and Huatso, but also Mandzouka in position “4”, who gives us important help in several games. I think Juancho will help us a lot as he is a very experienced player. He hasn’t competed for two months, but I think he will help us,” ehsaid the Turkish technician in detail.

Vildosa: “Believe in our strength”

Luka Vildosa, in turn, took the floor and said: “We won the last game, so I don’t think we will go on a losing streak. We feel good in the league and that is very important. We are trying to build something and want to show trust in the process. That will definitely be the case.” A difficult game because they are playing at home. We are happy with the last result in the EuroLeague, but I think we are on the right track.

Villeurbanne is a very good team, they have played well in the last few games with the new coach, they play differently and they definitely have dangerous players. Beyond that, we have to play our game, believe in our strength and keep building!”