By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Despite leading for most of the time AX Armani Exchange Olimpia suffered a loss against Valencia Baskets at home and their coach Simone Pianigiani sees that as the reflection of their season.
“Tonight’s game was a mirror of our season in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague because we played another good game. We were playing with players that were 50 percent ready to stay on the court. Until the last two hours, we didn’t know who is ready to play or not“, stated the Italian coach.
Despite the loss, Pianigiani thinks his players did a good job. “In the first half, we deserved to have a bigger lead. We missed some easy shots that could give us confidence. They played with more energy. Every time we miss the shots they score easy points in the fastbreaks. However, these guys are working. We try to build mentality and that’s our goal. For the team that is out of the playoffs, we are playing too much tie games“, concluded Pianigiani.
On the other side, Txus Vidorreta was happy with a win on the road. “For us, this was a very good game. We controlled the rhythm in the first half, but we didn’t control the defensive rebound. This was the main reason for Armani’s lead in the first half. They had 10 offensive rebounds in the first half. Our second half was very good. We control the defensive rebounds in the second half so we could run. We allowed them to have only 3 offensive rebounds in the second half.We had an advantage of 10 points, but Vladimir Micov and Curtis Jerrels had a good shooting night and games were tied until the end. Abalde scored an important three for the win along with our defensive rebounding“, said the Spanish coach.