Bologna –
First friendly game of the season, tomorrow at 7 p.m. at Palacattani, for Virtus Segafredo Bologna. Against Pesaro, the Bianconeri team will also take the court for a good cause: in fact, ticket proceeds will be donated to the Lotta di Faenza – Palestra Lucchesi Sports Association in aid of the flooded populations of Emilia Romagna. Tickets available here
On the eve of the start of the pre-season spoke Assistant Coach Andrea Diana, who took stock of these first days of training: “We have reached the tenth day of training, we are progressing both from the point of view of workloads and from the technical point of view. We were surprised by the attitude of the newcomers but also by those who were there last year. We are in the construction phase, we are at the ABC: the priority right now is the physical part although we are also working from the technical point of view. The new players have motivation, they listen and put into practice what we are working on. For now we are at the basics, the goal right now is to grow week by week until the first official commitment, which for us will be the Italian Super Cup. Right now we are missing the national teams, we are at reduced ranks, and we are inserting players from the youth sector to raise their bar and give them a taste of the first team. We expect daily growth as we wait for the full team.”
“Dunston has just started training, it’s a bit early to put him on the court and we’ll wait a few more days. Tomorrow’s game is a training for us, the guys will immediately get to know each other in a competitive game setting: from the technical point of view, little has been done for now but some concepts we will already try to put on the court. Our philosophy of play starts from the defensive aspect and certainly from sharing the ball in attack.”
“Teams have to be seen when the right moments come and that’s when the proper evaluations will start to be made. Our new players are all at a time in their growing careers. They have all approached the job with great motivation. Ours will be a team that cannot do without a strong defensive identity.”
The players in the national team? “We watch them on a daily basis, we get a statistical report and video on everyone in addition to messages from Coach Scariolo who watches all our workouts even from a distance. We feel a lot of closeness from everyone, from those who are at the World Cup right now but also from our company, which in these first days is already present at our trainings obviously with Paolo Ronci but also our CEO Luca Baraldi. We feel very protected and very much a group from this point of view.”
