Maccabi Tel Aviv heads back to Athens for the decisive game 5 against Panathinaikos on Tuesday (21:15 Israel time) in their Euroleague quarterfinal; series that is all knotted up at 2-2. Both teams split the games on each others home court with the yellow-and-blue winning game 1 and 3 while the Greens captured games 2 and 4 with one final clash on tap for a trip to the Final Four which will be held in Berlin May 24-26.

PAO, who finished the in 2nd place overall in the regular season will have the chance to close out the series on their home court at the OAKA Arena as over 20,000 fans will be packed into the facility to see their team attempt to advance to the promised land for the first time in over a decade.

Head Coach Ergin Ataman knows that game 5 will be all hands on deck, “It has been a good series. Now we get one more time the home court advantage with the big win in Belgrade. We won many big games this season in OAKA against many big teams, Maccabi also is a very good team and we will play 100 percent of course to win the game.”

Panagiotis Kalaitzakis also spoke about the importance of the game for the franchise as a whole, “It’s a very important game, not only for this year but for this decade for the club. We will have 25K people and we have already played them 7 times and this will be our 8th time this year, so it’s not just about basketball but who wants it more. We will wait it from the first minutes and play goat defense and get the crowd into the game. We are very focused and very well prepared and we are just waiting to begin the game on Tuesday night.”

No doubt playing at home will be a big plus for Panathinaikos as ioannis Papapetrou explained, “I expect this place will get very loud, I expect an amazing atmosphere and I expect a great showing from our fans and I expect my team to come out and be very aggressive. There will be a a lot of fans who will show up and I am happy that my family will be there as well.”

Although Maccabi Tel Aviv will be without their star guard Wade Baldwin for this matchup, Kalaitzakis knows that the yellow-and-blue still has plenty of dangerous players, “They are a very well coached team have some talented players, we know Baldwin won’t be able to play and they have other guards as we have seen in this series in John Dibartolomeo and Tamir Blatt as well as Brown. They can score the ball which they have done all series long. They have punished our turnovers and scored on the fast break so we have to be ready. The game will be about fighting and who wants it more.”

“We are expecting a very aggressive game as we understand that it’s game 5 of the playoffs and the winner will go to the Final Four,” Papapetrou added. “Macccabi will come in here very aggressive and they will give everything that they have. They have given us very hard fights the entire series and we expect nothing less now. We will be ready, we will be prepared and we will give more than 100%.”

For Ataman, his focus will be on his own players as well as keeping the mistakes to a minimum on the court, “I look only at my team’s players, we’ll see which players will be on the court and we’ll play our game, so it’s not important for me to know who would play and who wouldn’t play. Every game we have big character players, every game some players play better and some players give a lower performance. As for Juancho Hernangomez [who had been injured and missed game 3 and 4] will be on the court tomorrow.”

“We adjust some mistakes that we made in the previous game, but honestly I don’t like to change tactics, we will play the same tactics. Maccabi is a very good offensive team, they find very well ways to score, but Tuesday I’m not thinking to stop Maccabi on some score. I’m just thinking to make more points than Maccabi.”

While there will no doubt be plenty of pressure, Kalaitzakis doesn’t quite see game 5 in that particular way, “There are other things in life and other people that have way more pressure than playing basketball for which we are paid. There will be a lot of fans and this is what we all dream about. If I speak about myself, I dream about these moments, playing game 5 in front of thousands of fans so I don’t think it’s pressure, but it’s an opportunity to prove ourselves.”

Ataman may be satisfied as to where his team is now, but the 2x Euroleague champion bench boss isn’t ready to stop just here, “Tuesday is a different game between two good teams and I believe that all season we deserved to be in this position. We played good basketball and finished the regular season in the second spot which was a great success for Panathinaikos, but of course now we want more.”