© photo by Pallacanestro Trieste
From the PalaTrieste press room, coach Jamie Christian presents the first match of the 2024 Playoffs. The series will start away at the Pala “Gianni Asti” to challenge Reale Mutua Torino, scheduled for Sunday 5 May at 6.00 pm.
Coach, there’s very little left until the start of these long-awaited playoffs. What is the atmosphere like in the locker room? “Our whole team is very excited for this season finale. We all arrived here in Trieste last August, excited to get to this time of year and curious to see how much our team would be able to improve from start to finish. I think we can be satisfied with our form today and how much we have improved. Now, we are happy because we are finally healthy and feeling good. We’ve managed to put together two great weeks of training with the whole team healthy, and the boys are feeling really good. We feel a warm and trusting atmosphere accompanying us at this moment.”
Starting the series away won’t be easy, a Torino team that reaches the playoffs having recently recovered from two injuries, Pepe and De Vico. What could be the key factors to take home the match? “Torino played a great season and earned the right to play these matches at home straight away. Unfortunately for us we weren’t good enough in the Regular Season to have the advantage of starting with the field factor. But we have a group of determined and passionate men, eager to continue taking the field. For me, this is the best at this stage of the season, being satisfied with the group you take the field with. The last time in Turin was very tough. Their last quarter, the way they closed down spaces is something no team we’ve faced has done. We have a pretty big challenge ahead of us, but I have faith in the guys.”
Franco Ciani in his pre-match interview yesterday spent words of praise for Trieste, especially for our tactical versatility in the roster now that the team is complete. Do you expect a very different match compared to the one seen a few weeks ago during the clock phase? “He and his coaching staff do an excellent job and they have equally good players, like many teams in this league. This will just be a fight between heavyweights from two teams that are super hungry, with a lot of veteran players still trying to prove something. There is nothing but enormous enthusiasm for the challenge we will face. What makes this matchup so fun to coach, play and, I’m sure, watch, is having two different styles of play that, when you look at the numbers, achieve similar results. And therefore aggression and tenacity will be necessary, especially in the details. We have to make a difference there.”
How did these two weeks of training go and what was the main focus? “These two weeks have been excellent, with everyone on the pitch every single day. For most days, with 11 players available, we were able to really work at the highest level. When you have healthy players and guys who move fast, you can work well every day. And I think I’ve added some things that will give us an advantage.
Our focus over the last couple of weeks has been on getting continuity between us. We’ve had to play a lot of different lineups this year, out of necessity, which I actually think can give us an advantage in this league and in this series. It means that we have been forced to look at ourselves in the mirror, both in the good and bad times: we have been forced to recover in both the good and the bad times.”
