Greek Women's A1 9/2008 - Paleo Faliro 60, Olympiada Larissas 49

Think of a five-on-five pickup basketball game. Your five guys versus my five guys, and we'll play until one team loses.

That's what Paleo Faliro (5-4) appeared to be facing. As it turned out, Olympiada Larissas (2-7) only suited up six players. Four of those players played the entire game. Two of them split the duties, each one playing exactly 20 minutes each.

Do you say, "Okay, you can work on your crossword puzzles?" No, because Paleo Faliro would only play eight of their players. It was enough for a 60-49 victory.

The boxscore is here.

The first ten minutes appeared fairly relaxed - it was only 13-9 after the first quarter. Olympiada Larissas remained within striking distance of Paleo Faliro, as the score was 31-26 at the half. The third quarter was another low scoring wonder - each team had only 11 points - and the score was 42-37 going into the final quarter. Paleo Faliro, somehow, managed to get it together enough to score 18 points in the final quarter and stretched their margin of victory.

Paleo Faliro shot 33 percent and Olympiada Larissas shot 35 percent - it had to be a horrible game to watch. Furthermore, neither team took that many shots. You'd expect a team to take at least 60 shots during a game, but Paleo Faliro took 56 and Olympiada Larissas took 48. With the low shooting, other facets of the game became more important. Paleo Faliro outrebounded their opponents offensively by almost a 2-1 margin. Olympiada Larissas also had 20 turnovers.

Of the seven players that actually suited up for Paleo Faliro, Georgia Day (Greek nationality) scored 12 points. Tatiana Zotova and Karen Mourd each scored 11 points. Teana Miller would score nine points, and Kristin Haynie would score six points - unfortunately, she shot 2 for 8.

Only four players actually scored for Olympiada Larissas. I suspect their leading scorer was Daphanie Kennedy, a guard from Pepperdine who graduated in 2008 - she scored 20 points. Sherry McCracklin, a graduate of UNLV, scored 11 points and 10 rebounds. I just hope that they're getting paid for being a two-woman team over there. (Well, Eftihi Deligianni represented for Greece with 12 points.)

Greek women's basketball. Very strange. Very strange, indeed.