Casale Monferrato –

Post-game Coach Sergio Scariolo: “I start by congratulating coach Ramondino, his team and his entire staff because once again they have shown great professional quality, great class, great competitiveness: challenges against Bertram are always, whether it goes well or not, difficult where you know you have to go to the maximum with an opponent that will present you with different types of problems, certainly capable of competing until the end.
I also want to congratulate my players, because the game had taken a bad turn because we knew Bertram could have such a big impact at the start and maybe we gave them a little too much freedom at the beginning. However, we must give them credit for playing very well, moving the ball well, finding good shots and chastising our assists well, in a first half where they were certainly superior. At the same time we told ourselves over the past few days that the game would be a long one and that we would have to be patient, continuing to put energy into it in order to reap the benefits later, and that’s a bit what happened.
Congratulations to our opponent, congratulations to our players: with this victory we reach our third final in national competitions this year and we felt we owed it to our fans and our club. This is the part, up to here, that we owed and it was obligatory to reach it, using the correct word without turning around. Now we are in a different situation, completely different, much more serene, much calmer, and we can change from having to do something to wanting to do something great, and we will try to prepare as best we can to do that.
The approach? It’s a game of results in the end, so if you win you are happier to have won, while if we had lost we would have been more upset to have started the first half. Without taking credit away from Bertram for the way they played the first half, it’s easy to say that we weren’t as focused and tough as we should have been, and that’s true, but you have to be able on the other side to be as effective: let’s give them credit. Something we definitely need to improve in our approach to the game, but the key note is that against a strong opponent, away from home, we won, we came back and had great intensity and energy in the second half and managed to win the game, ending the series.”