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The first center questionable for away team

Karsikaya played an excellent Cup tournament, kicked out Banvit and the home team Gaziantep, proving themselves a team with wide rotation and good offensive capabilities

In our separated season preview where we analyzed Olin Edirne separately, we wrote how this summer the offensively focused coach Cem Akdag arrived who demands a lot of running and transition. Olin played in accordance to that last week when they were the hosts of group C of the Turkish Cup, they hosted Tofas, Fener and Torku Selcuk from Konya. They won against Torku and in the crucial match to go through they lost against Tofas 91-71. They needed a miracle in 3rd round, winning against Fenerbahce, but not only did they not win, they were crushed with 44 points margin. Fener played poorly day earlier, Obradovic called a meeting so they raised their game significantly as well. Besides that the coach Akdag couldn't count on Christos Tapoutos who got injured a day earlier and the tournament was missed by very important Reha Oz (small forward). What was especially noticeable in their performance is the number of three-pointer shots. In each of the three matches they had more shots for three than for two and the most important player by far is the playmaker Darius Washington, the starter of everything and in many cases the doer as well. The first guard is Baris Guney, small forward Tapoutos and the high positions are held by Francis Torin and Caner Ercan and there they seem the weakest.

 - We didn't have the complete team in training because of injuries and that makes our preparations for Karsikaya difficult - said coach Olina several days ago.

Washington missed some trainings, Tapoutos as well and Reha Oz is still out and his return is expected at the end of the month.

 - Pinar Karsikaya are a team who are very aggressive both in defense and offense, they play with a lot of rotation and we need to answer that with the same amount of aggressiveness in front of our fans - announced Akdag.

Karsikaya will be another great challenge because the team from Izmir offered excellent performances in Gaziantep last week. First they won against the home team 75-72 with five two-digit score players (Altintig, Dixon, Demir, Lyons and Diebler) and then they crushed Banvit with 18 points difference with 26 points by Dixon, 13 by Demir and 11 by Hersek and Diebler. Already after the second round they had secured going through so their relaxing on the last day was punished by a decisive loss against Trabzonspor. However, there were no consequences, except probably for a lot of angry looks from Banvit who was eliminated by that result.

In all three matches center Mutli Demir, who joined later on, had a noticeable role and a big reason for that is the injury of the center Esteban Batista in the second minute of the first match. He didn't come back on the tournament. We didn't manage to find the information about the seriousness of the injury. Even if he won't play, Karsikaya are much better filled team, especially concerning the axis of playmaker Dixon, small forward Diebler and power forward Lyons.

Olin and Karsiyaka last season played two games in which they scored 140 and 152 points. Compared to the last season, Olin have replaced their defensive coach and they acquired extremely offensively minded new coach while Karsiyaka lost their interior players and they kept only Diebler and Dixon and they acquired great Lyons from Budivelnyk, Olin showed last week in the Cup they greatly depend on Darius Washington and that they play games with almost 30 three point attempts, more than for two points, and that they seek their chances in transition. Karsiyaka will be able to match that, they also have players that can put up big numbers and last week games against Banvit, Tranzon and Gaziantep speak into that favor. I think that more realistic margin should be placed 4 or 5 points higher.