By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Despite an impressive comeback from a 20-point deficit to force an overtime, Unicaja Malaga lost to Zalgiris Kaunas at home after a buzzer-beater by Edgaras Ulanovas.
The huge effort his players made in order to return to the game after falling behind with such a large margin is a thing to be proud of, for Joan Plaza.
“With all of my teams, I can never guarantee that we are going to win. If anyone says they are going to win all their games, it’s a mistake. Of course, we can always say we’re going to fight and try not to have games that we need to come back from 20 points. But just because we are playing at home doesn’t mean we will always win. The message I want to give to the season ticket holders is maybe there might be a few games where there is a sense that it wasn’t worth it to come here, but we always play our hearts out 99 percent of the games. We do the best that we can. No one wants to have a game where you are 20 points down with a low percentage like we had,” Plaza said.
The head coach of Unicaja Malaga also added that, “… but I am proud that we didn’t throw in the towel. We nearly saw the second overtime and for better or worse I leave with a sense of pride in my team. And this is our philosophy as a team. Of course, there are some reasons we lost this game. We had 16 turnovers. We had 11 in the first half and just 5 in the second half. And we had 22 percent from three-point shots and they had 47 percent. They shot 20 percent better in two-point shots. The difference in this game wasn’t bigger because of the commitment of our players. Our players don’t cry due to adverse circumstances, they work hard. I haven’t seen the video yet, but when you come back from 20 points down in a game it means that you have worked very hard. In the end, we are proud of the work we did – even the last shot they made it was a contested shot and we played good defense. Our team competed until the very last minute. “