Bologna –
Inebriated by the win against E-Work Faenza, Virtus has already scheduled its next commitment against Fila San Martino, the recovery of the fourteenth game. Among the various historical courses and recurrences, on the bench of the hosts there will be Lorenzo Serventi who left a good memory of himself as a black and white team last season with the qualification to the play-off.
Three victories in the last five outings, defeated only by Venice and Schio even though they’ve shown a good game: this is San Martino’s roster led by the American Shae, currently third in scoring average with an astonishing 18.61 to which 11.8 rebounds must be added, special attention to number one for obvious reasons. For the role she plays, that of center, it will be fundamental the recovery of Turner’s condition to the maximum, who came out battered from the away game of Schio, whose lack was absorbed by Cinili against Faenza. Milazzo, dynamic point guard, will be another player to monitor because with her 12.3 average and 2.5 assists per game, she is able to put defenses in apprehension. Russo (11.5 average) and Mitchell (10.2) integrate a sparkling attack and contribute to placing San Martino in ninth place in the points scored classification: 69.6 points scored on average this season. The assists entry, however, marks an alarming 12.2 per game and the eleventh place in the ranking.
And it’s precisely the rotation that can be Lupari’s weak point. Numbers in hand, Lupari doesn’t get much from the supporting cast, both numerically and in terms of energy: in fact, Filippi is the sixth player in terms of minutes spent on court (26.9 on average) while Pilabere, despite only two games less, is far behind with only 16.2 on average, which drops drastically to 7.9 in the case of Guarise with the same number of games played. A double-edged sword, then, that of the short rotations, because if on one hand they always allow for very high rhythms, on the other they require a great expenditure of energy with little margin for recovery within the game.
