GRE/RUS - Zisis v Spanoulis in big QF series

SIENA (Euroleague) - Nikos Zisis will be hoping to make it back to the Olympics when he shows up for national team duty this summer with Greece.

The chances of that happening appear to be pretty good because Greece will have some important players back in the squad, veterans who missed last year’s EuroBasket like Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Sofoklis Schortsanitis and a player that Montepaschi Siena guard Zisis will square off against on Wednesday night in the Euroleague, Vassilis Spanoulis of Olympiacos.

Spanoulis isn’t just a good player, but a great one.

His being named as the Euroleague Player of the Month for February while shining for Olympiacos was a good sign not only for the Reds as they enter the business end of their season, but also for Greece who will be in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) in Venezuela.

Right now, Zisis and scoring machine Spanoulis are adversaries, focused on the first game of their Euroleague showdown on Wednesday.

The teams met in the Quarter-Finals last year, too, and Mens Sana, despite being blown out in the opening game at Olympiacos, came back to win three straight and advance to the Final Four.

"I have a few friends in that team but on the court, it will be a real battle for the wins in this series," Zisis said.

Georgios Printezis, a forward who played for the Greeks at the last Olympics and was crucial in the team's EuroBasket 2009 bronze-medal triumph, is another player to watch for those who are assessing the options that national team coach Ilias Zouros will have when he names his squad.

The forward could be poised for a Greece return after missing last summer.

Other Greek national team players involved in this series include Olympiacos youngsters Kostas Sloukas and Kostas Papanikolaou.

Both were in the side that finished sixth at the EuroBasket in Lithuania.

Martynas Gecevicius, a Lithuanian, is trying to impress and return to his national team.

He helped the Baltic country capture a surprise bronze medal at the 2010 World Championship but was left out of the squad that played in Lithuania last year.

Gecevicius has boosted his chances of making Kestutis Kemzura’s team again with 42.9% (18 of 42) shooting from long range in Europe, including 46% (seven of 15) in the Top 16.

There are also a couple of Greeks to keep tabs on in the Bilbao Basket side that is a clear underdog in its Euroleague Quarter-Final tie with CSKA Moscow.

Kostas Vasileiadis and Dimitrios Mavroeidis, members of last year's EuroBasket squad for Greece, have been key men in the Bilbao team for the past two seasons.

As for CSKA, they have plenty of Russians who are going to be travelling to Venezuela with the national team and one of them is Andrey Vorontsevich.

Bilbao is not a team, he says, to be taken lightly.

"We should expect tough physical basketball games with lots of contact," he warned.

FIBA