Engin Özerhun, General Manager of Efes Pilsen who lost the final game in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague to their hosts CSKA Moscow by 78-69, said they need to be a team winning away games, too.
Özerhun added: “We have qualified for the second round without having won any of the away games. We have some poor performance in away games. Though we have not lost any home game, we could not win any away one in the Euroleague. Our plan was to win our first away game against CSKA Moscow, who were already bowed out of the Euroleague, and thus rank higher in the group, but we somehow could not achieve it all. We could in fact win the away games we played against Union Olimpija, Valencia, AJ Milano and CSKA Moscow, except for the one against Panathinaikos. However, we failed to score enough points in those games. We could only score 8 points in the second quarter of the CSKA Moscow game. The disadvantage of playing away games should not be this bad. In the last night’s game, both Efes Pilsen and CSKA Moscow suffered lack of concentration. The quality of the game was worse than that of a typical Euroleague one. We had an opportunity to win our first away game this season and thus finish second in the group, but we missed it.”
Stating that they have managed to qualify for the second round despite their group was the toughest in the Euroleague, Engin Özerhun said, “I believe both CSKA Moscow and AJ Milano, who failed to qualify fort he Top 16, will win the championship title in their domestic leagues. From now on, we will wait for our next opponents in the Top 16 and get prepared for highly challenging games. Without winning some of our away games in the Top 16, I do not think we can qualify for the next round. We must win at least some of our away games.”