Brose Bamberg dominates Olympiacos

Brose Bamberg led from start to finish en route to beating Olympiacos Piraeus 82-68 at Brose Arena on Thursday night. The win improved Bamberg to 5-9 in the standings, while snapping Olympiacos’ four-game winning streak and dropping the Reds to 9-5. Bamberg opened the game with an 11-0 run and never relinquished it. A 17-6 spurt in the second quarter broke the 20-point barrier and Bamberg never let Olympiacos closer than 9 points the rest of the way. If Olympiacos had any chance of coming back, Darius Miller denied it hitting 4 fourth-quarter triples and scoring 15 of his 20 points in the final stanza. Fabien Causeur scored all of his 17 points in the first half, Nicolo Melli had 13 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists and Janis Strelnieks collected 9 points and 7 assists in victory. Olympiacos, which played without the injured Georgios Printezis, saw Vasislis Spanouli score 15 points and Kostas Papanikolaou add 11 in defeat.

Bamberg stormed out of the gate, scoring the first 11 points of the game behind Causeur and Miller. Olympiacos needed more than four and a half minutes to score its first points, before threes from Papanikolaou and Spanoulis cut the deficit to 13-9. However, Miller hit a triple to spark another Bamberg run and the hosts were quickly back up with a double-digit lead, which stood at 23-13 after 10 minutes. Back-to-back threes from Melli and Strelnieks opened a 29-13 advantage after 63 seconds in the second. A 0-8 run sparked by big man Patric Young got the visitors within 10 points, but Bamberg answered with 7 straight points, capped by a Nikos Zisis triple, before a three-point play and three-point shot from Causeur increased the margin to 48-27. Olympiacos cut it to 48-30 at halftime with a Spanoulis layup-plus-foul. The visitors scored the first 6 points of the third quarter. A Vangelis Mantzaris triple cut the deficit to 50-39. Zisis stopped the bleeding for the hosts, but a three-pointer from Spanoulis helped cut the deficit to single digits and Papanikolaou beat the third-quarter buzzer with a put-back to make it 59-50 at the end of third quarter. But the visitors never got closer. Strelnieks hit a three to restore a double-digit lead, before Miller took over. His 11 points in four minutes opened a 75-58 edge and Bamberg cruised the rest of the way.