Campobasso, November 16 –
At the end of the game against Campobasso, valid for the advance of the 13th day of Techfind Serie A1, these were the words of coach Pierre Vincent: “We struggled to manage Molisana’s defensive choices and understand where to play, we forced many things. We played without three girls in the quintet, there is an imbalance in the team, the girls who don’t play as much find themselves with a lot of responsibility, and I must say that on the defensive end they did very well. I’m happy with the bench because they do things seriously, they execute, they give energy. The attacking part is where we have the most difficulty. We couldn’t work with the girls returning from nationals because they train a lot there, they have two matches and away games. We had to train the others 2vs2 and 3vs3 and I’m really happy with their energy and concentration. It’s a role they struggle to manage because they don’t get the chance to play so much in the quintet and on the offensive end we made so many mistakes, it looked like a team at the beginning of the season. Certainly Molisana is responsible in this because they put a lot of pressure and are aggressive, we struggle to manage this pressure. We do good things on certain types of defence and we struggle more when they are more aggressive, it’s something we have to manage step by step, but when we don’t train it’s difficult to learn. We’ll have a break after Prague and we’ll have three to four days to work a bit more to find the right rhythm. We had a good start to the season but we are dropping particularly with these types of defences, we came back from this national break with 3 girls less which doesn’t help to build the game, we have to adapt, don’t lose games and move on.”
Lauren Cox, who scored 20 points tonight with 14 rebounds, said: “It was a very tough game with an equally tough atmosphere to play in. The fans make themselves heard and it was fun during the game. Before the game we knew it would be a very tough challenge and we had to give everything. In Italy you have to play with a lot of physicality, you get a lot of fouls and sometimes they are not whistled and you have to keep playing. I don’t have a preference between the Italian game and the Spanish game, I found myself well in Spain as I am finding myself very well in Italy. The season is long and we have many games, we cannot stop too much to celebrate the victories or dwell too much on the defeats, we must always think about the next game. Sometimes we don’t have much time to prepare for games, we have to stay focused and make sure we pay attention to what the coach asks of us. Right now I’m focused on the season in Bologna, if the opportunity to participate in the Olympics with Team USA 3×3 comes up it would be a great honour for me but at the moment I’m thinking about the season here.”
