Bologna –
At the end of the game against Treviso, valid for the Round 7 ofLBA, these were the words of coach Luca Banchi: “We file this game with a victory that puts us back on track after the double defeat in Cremona and Madrid. We came to this game with very little time to recover and to be able to prepare, we felt the fatigue and tiredness exacerbated by Jordan’s early injury that took him out of the game and forced us to invent rotations asking for an effort also in terms of minutes as well as type of play from Toko, who tonight slopped quite a few minutes at center with the absolute lack of consistency for some stretches of the game that allowed Treviso to stay in contact. Theirs is a team conditioned by injuries and absences, but always dangerous and always capable of scoring as it did in the last period: 30 points in ten minutes, a testament to the fact that regardless of the type of quintets we propose we must be able to play serious and consistent basketball that does not waste our energy either physically or nervously. Getting them close becomes unnecessary, especially at a time like this where we dive into another round of very tough and extremely close contests. It was necessary to have at least from the nervous point of view the desire to play. In my opinion it was seen mainly from the defensive point of view, there was the will to play a serious and aggressive game, in terms of quality it was certainly not the game we all dreamed of playing. At certain junctures the fatigue and lack of lucidity seemed evident in small details that are related to the timing of passing, reads or the movements that would have allowed us to be more consistent defensively. A contest where you close with 7 stoppages conceded gives you a picture that, beyond the lack of centers, there was not the energy and explosiveness we usually have to finish at the basket as is in our characteristics. We focused our work on today’s morning, you approach the game with virtually no preparation and you lose your go-to center after very few minutes. It is difficult to find a line with a team that came here conditioned by absences and injuries alternating defenses a lot, playing a lot of zone, trying to use atypical quintets. It was not easy to approach such a contest, we had some difficulties but we managed to keep them at a good distance in spite of the fact that we did not play such brilliant basketball as on other occasions. We come to terms with a very pressing schedule and tonight with an unforeseen emergency that we could not handle in the first few minutes, complicit with Cacok’s three fouls in a short time.”
On Mickey’s injury: “I don’t have a track record to tell you how from a physical point of view he reacts to injuries, it’s very much related to individual characteristics. Some people metabolize these injuries in no time, you have to see the characteristics of the injury and his pain tolerance. Clearly the calendar does not help and will not help, when you play in the Euroleague it is like that. If such an injury to teams that play once a week costs one or two games of absence, for us it is three times as much. Having such a schedule everything is extremely complicated, let’s see how it reacts. We defer to Monday for a more complete view, medically and physiotherapeutically we are in the hands of absolute excellence.”
