Quotes of the head coaches at the Press Conference after the game Aris - Zadar 73-67, for the Game 5 of the Eurocup regular season, at Alexandrio Melathro, Thessaloniki:

Fotis Katsikaris (Aris head coach): “Congratulations to the players and to our supporters, who helped us get this victory. We accomplished our first goal in the Eurocup, which was the qualification to the Top 16. We had the opportunity to win by a wider margin, but Zadar is a team which insists and fights until the very end. Nevertheless, in the final moments we had cold blood and won. We didn’t have enough speed at the beginning. In the second and third quarter we were good in defense and built an important score difference, being able to score from the perimeter and in the paint, too. Betts is in good shape and helped us a lot, not only with the points he scored but also by opening up our game in attack. In the fourth quarter, though, our attack didn’t work well. We got stuck. We lost too many defensive rebounds, 16 in total, giving Zadar the chance to have a lot of second attacks.

Paunic and Labovic had a good debut. I’m pleased with their performance and so are they. Seeing them enjoy the fans’ applause and celebrate in the dressing room, as if they were members of this team since the start of the season, was a very pleasant image. They were aware of what they had to do tonight. After all, they had already played against Zadar quite a few times and they knew their opponents. Despite of being young, they have enough experience and they didn’t push things. They only wanted to be helpful to the team. Paunic’s entrance made us change tempo in defense, while Labovic is a very smart player.

I really don’t see that much difference between ending up 1st or 2nd in the group, but we will definitely go for the victory in Israel. In case of finishing 2nd, we would play against two winners of other groups, Valencia and Unics Kazan, both of which I know really well.

Injuries haven’t been kind with us this season and it’s a real quiz to set the date when there will be no absentees in the team. Although we have some crucial matches ahead of us, no player will come back from an injury unless he is at least 80 or 90% fit. Barlos will need 3 more weeks until he can practice with a ball, so his return in action will take even more time. Kakiouzis, on the other hand, is a very insistent guy and he can take the pain. So, he wants to make his comeback next week, which we shall see, because we don’t want to undertake any risk”.

Zmago Sagadin (Zadar head coach): “I can’t say that we didn’t do our maximum effort. However, it wasn’t enough. We were decent in defense, but we had a scoring problem. We missed some 7-8 lay-ups and also missed too many free throws. We could have scored 75 or 80 points, but we threw it away. We were amazing in the rebounds and especially in the offensive rebounds, but this wasn’t enough to make us win.

It’s not easy to play in this gym. I think that 2-3 of our younger players were affected by the atmosphere and didn’t play as good as they can. These fans are great, they are really rewarding to their team. I want to congratulate them, because they support their team in a correct way and they truly are the sixth player for Aris.

I think that Aris is a better team than Hapoel Jerusalem, which loses a great part of their potential while away from home. That’s why we had won them easily in Croatia. However, they are strong in their home court, which is small and puts pressure on their opponents -and that’s where the 1st place of the group will be decided”.