French basketball will have to be content with having brought a representative in the last four of the C1 for the first time since Asvel in 1997, but wait to find a successor to Limoges, the last club to have reached the final and to have been crowned European champion, in 1993.

The Roca Team, standard bearer of French basketball at the highest European level, will see it is the glass half full, with this first final square reached in its second participation in the queen of competitions, after a magnificent series in the quarterfinals against Maccabi Tel Aviv (3-2), and while it was still playing in the third division nine years ago.

Especially if she gets on the podium on Sunday by winning the small final.

Or the glass half empty, those twelve points lead at halftime (41-29) that melted like snow in the summer sun of Mount Athos, the holy Greek mountain, during a nightmarish third quarter, lost 27-2 and at the end of which it found itself stunned and trailed by thirteen units (43-56).

Rare "blackout"

ASM point guard Jordan Loyd "doesn't remember such a quarter at this level", his coach Sasa Obradovic little more: "Such a blackout almost never happens at this level."

And the Serbian technician leaves with "bitterness" of this first Final Four also for him, after having "said before the game that it should not be so painful if we lost because we arrived here with less experience in this kind of game."

Monaco coach Sasa Obradovic against Olympiacos in the Euroleague Final Four on May 19, 2023 in Kaunas © PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP

But the first period of his team opened the door to the dream of a final and a hypothetical double Eurocup (2021)-Euroleague, thanks to an aggressive defense causing ball losses in shambles of Olympiacos (8 at the break) and forcing him to go to the free throw line, where the three-time European champion (1997, 2012 and 2013) was particularly clumsy (50% success rate before half-time only).

In attack, the duo of backs composed of Jordan Loyd (7 pts, 11 overall) and Mike James (13 pts, 17 total) feasted, as John Brown or Donatas Motiejunas under the racket.

"Learning from this result"

But, tense by the stakes, the Greek players "realized" at half-time "that we had to calm down", according to their coach Georgios Bartzokas.

This resulted in a storm for ASM, which sank in the third quarter against a much more aggressive and precise defense led by Thomas Walkup, and easy baskets from French pivot Moustapha Fall (12 pts), MVP of the season Sacha Vezenkov (19) or captain Kostas Papanikolaou (15 pts), who also planted two banderilles from long distance.

The target of the club of the Rock has it deregulated (5/24 at long distance in the end) and the whole team has "lost its footing", in the words of Obradovic, as the noisy and numerous Greek supporters have found their voice.

Monaco's defence overwhelmed by the red waves of Olympiacos in Kaunas, May 19, 2023 © PETRAS MALUKAS / AFP

"We knew what was going to happen (when we came back from the dressing room), we told ourselves (at half-time) to push hard and stay focused for the first five minutes to respond physically and mentally," said the Serb.

This is not the first time according to him: "It happened to us several times this year not to be able to respond to an opposing series, we must all learn from this result." To try, next year, to scratch one more step.

© 2023 AFP