Outgoing Euroleague champion Panathinaikos will bid farewell to the competition for this season on Thursday when it hosts Greek League foe Maroussi BC in perhaps the most important game the latter has ever played.
Watch Panathinaikos v Maroussi live on SportingBet's live streaming service, from 18:00 CET today.
Maroussi will try to make history by joining a select club of teams to reach the Quarterfinal Playoffs in their debut season in the competition. For that to happen, however, Maroussi must beat Panathinaikos and get help from Regal Barcelona, which hosts Partizan Belgrade at the same time.
Maroussi enters the game with a 2-3 record in Top 16 Group E. If it wins and Partizan (3-2) loses, Maroussi will overtake the Serbian champs for second place in the group due to a better head-to-head result and move on to challenge the winner of Group F – either Real Madrid or Maccabi Electra – in the best-of-five playoff.
However if Maroussi loses or Partizan wins, Barcelona and Partizan will advance to the playoffs, leaving Maroussi on the outside looking in. Maroussi could even drop to last place in the group if Panathinaikos wins by 2 or more points.
Head coach Georgios Bartzokas’s men will feel confident though after edging the Greens 80-78 last month as Billy Keys shined with 17 points. Furthermore, Panathinaikos could be without four of its top players – Vassilis Spanoulis, Dimitris Diamantidis, Nikola Pekovic and Stratos Perperoglou – due to injuries.
Accordingly, the Greens will play at times with makeshift lineups, while perhaps giving extended minutes to reserves Milenko Tepic, Nick Calathes or Giorgi Shermadini. Tepic and Calathes will defer to red-hot Drew Nicholas, who made 6 three-pointers without a miss in last week’s win, and veteran Sarunas Jasikevicius, still giving the team a strong backcourt to challenge the Maroussi guards. Jamon Lucas and Keys lead the Maroussi backcourt, with Marios Batis coming off the bench. Tepic will also play some small forward in Perperoglou’s place, leaving him a tough matchup against Michalis Pelekanos or even the much taller shooter Pat Calathes off the bench. In the paint, Mike Batiste, Antonis Fotsis and Marcus Haislip welcome Shermadini’s help against the rotation of Jared Homan, Dimitris Mavroeidis, Kostas Kaimakoglou and Stevan Nadjfeji.
This game promises to be an intense affair, with Maroussi facing a do-or-die contest, while Panathinaikos plays for pride and some players look to capitalize on extra minutes to prove themselves. The result should be 40 minutes of excitement for everyone watching.