Spain-Greece postgame quotes

Jose Calderon (photo: FIBA)

16-09-2007 10:52

Pepu Hernandez:

"All my respect to Greece. They have made us work very hard. Sometimes when you win a tough game there's more satisfaction. Greece and Yannakis did a great job. It has been a team game, and the players from the bench were supporting the ones on court.

It was clearly a game where we showed our quality. We always want and try to win.

Sometimes you must work very hard. Every time we had patience no matter what happened on court. Some things happened in the game that didn't allow us to play the way we want to.

Some players on my team have difficulties against aggressive defense and we'll need to fix it. I'm very satisfied that we also enjoy this. Coaches don't often get a chance to enjoy. I'm very happy for my players."

Jose Calderon:
"It was 12 players against 12 players, maybe even 15 against 15 because all coaches were part of it. That game was a war, and the good thing is the team played at it's best. We played like a family and it shows because when somebody is making a mistake then others come and encourage him.
This reminds me the semi-finals against Argentina from last year. Once again we came up with the pride that this team has. Greece is fighting till the end, but I hope tomorrow we'll play at the same level on both ends. We can't choose who's best for us. We can't believe that we'll play against an easy team. In this tournament every game is difficult, and for sure the finals will be tough."

Panagiotis Yannakis:

"We saw another game between the runner-up of the world in the home of the champion. We didn't have much time to prepare for the game.

Congratulations to Spain, but we still try to play high level basketball, and it doesn't matter how, where and how often.
For me it was a very nice game, and it was a good promotion for basketball, and that's more important than who won the game. We wanted to play one-on-one defense because we wanted to control the game and we didn't until the last four minutes. I choose this tactic because they have a lot of players, and if you get many players involved in the game, then you're in trouble. If you see all the game, you'll see many details that changed the score of the game. We had a lot of chances to win in the end, but we didn't and this is basketball."

Kostas Tsartsaris:
"It was a very difficult game for both teams tonight. Spain had advantage because they had a night off. We were very tired from last night. We came to play against the best team and I think we proved our team is still on a very high level. We still have one more game and we want to win a medal."

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