Sarunas Jasikevicius: The guys showed a lot of professionalism and seriousness

Sarunas Jasikevicius talked after the win against Olympiacos.

“Congratulations to our players and fans and a big thank you to our fans who came to Belgrade and supported us. Everybody understands the feelings we have right now about this Final Four, it’s not really the most pleasant thing to play this game. I was really worried about how the team would look especially at the beginning, and the feeling of sadness that you enter the game with. But the guys showed a lot of professionalism and seriousness about them, going about their business. I thought it was very good. I thought it was important to do exactly what we did, come out, try to do the job.

“Obviously it’s not whole lot better now, the feeling, but it’s a little bit better. There were some positive performances for us, especially Cory playing so many minutes, that’s so important for us. Hopefully he can catch some rhythm and be the Cory Higgins that we know. Congratulations also to Olympiacos and the amazing atmosphere their fans created in this Final Four, they showed what kind of support they have and it’s really something we should mention. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s obvious that we have a good team but it’s also obvious we have a problem killing off games. Everybody knows Barca has a good team that can fight for everything. It was important to win today but not at any price, and Cory playing 22 minutes is very positive news for us. The locker room is terrible. It’s very sad.

“And I think that’s a good thing. We know that we have allowed a very big opportunity to escape us. But we know it’s not possible to win everything and a very important league trophy continues. We have to rest a little and go for the league playoffs. We have to keep pushing. No team is perfect, every team has defects and we know our own. The guys will keep working. We know that we’ve given the fans a lot of happiness already but we also know the most important thing for Barca fans is EuroLeague. So we have to keep working for more. The details we lack is about the game plan, the rules we have.

“Taking away the main thing the opposing player can do and how we can attack. But the most important is to not give any free stuff to the opponent, make them work for everything. The killer instinct is something we are trying to get. If you give a Final Four team the opportunity, they will come back. I have a team full of 30 year olds. They are experienced guys. They’ve been through good things and bad things. We have to be professional and finish the season good. We leave here tonight and this must be forgotten.”