After a series of very tough games, Aris will enter a new phase starting from the match against Ilisiakos (Wednesday 17/02, 20:30), David Blatt told the Press.

“Since I arrived here, we have only had very - very difficult games. From now on, we enter another phase of the schedule in the Greek League. We have the chance and the need to make up for some of the lost ground and we must start tomorrow, with a good performance” the American-Israeli said and added: “Ilisiakos is a team which we have studied over the last couple of days. We are not going to take lightly this game. We will have to play well in order to reach our goal”.

Mr. Blatt also spoke about the bad defeat to Panathinaikos. “Certainly we got beaten in a bad way. I could say a lot of things to explain why this happened, but more than anything I think that it was because we got to play Panathinaikos at a bad moment. Most of the things that happened during the fourth quarter were because of the mental and physical fatigue of the players, accumulated after this tough string of games. I didn’t want to use over-fatigued players, because in the upcoming weeks there are games we have to win and we will have to face those game with a full roster”.

Nevertheless, Aris’s coach made clear that “still there is no excuse for our bad performance. All of us should apologize to our fans. And the best way to apologize is through your performance in the upcoming games”.