Of Letizia Gaeta
PISTOIA – A regular season finale to be experienced in one breath is what awaits Estra Pistoia who will host Varese tomorrow at the PalaCarrara.
Tomorrow’s matches will decide the play-off grid, with coach Brienza’s team, now certain of the post-season, who will have to go all out (and hope for results favorable to them from other fields) to reach fifth position.
Difficult joints certainly but which will only be talked about in the event of victory. The red and whites, after the splendid success in Trento, want to repeat themselves at home so they can finally celebrate with the people of Pistoia who, for the occasion, have outdone themselves: the arena was already sold out yesterday to push the protagonists towards another extraordinary finish line.
Both teams will want to end the regular season on a high note and this will give rise to an intense challenge played at a very high pace, also because the Lombards like to play quickly and take a lot of important shots from long range.
“It is undoubtedly very nice and gratifying to think of playing your last match at home without worrying about the standings – this is how the red and white coach began in this morning’s pre-match conference – we want to enjoy the event and prepare ourselves as best we can for those who are the play-offs. It will be a nice event to share with the fans, but we still have something to do and therefore it must be a step towards what will be next week’s work and the start of the playoffs.”
The declared objective at the beginning of the season was salvation, achieved in unsuspecting times, but qualification for the play-offs was the real icing on the cake of an unforgettable year from the point of view of individual and team results.
The post-season, however, is a separate championship, the “victories” box is reset, as is the “defeats” box, and we start again.
“It is clear that we are deservedly inside the top eight, apart from the first four defeats, we have always been there and it would have been sad not to be able to fulfill this dream at the end of the journey. Just like the Italian Cup, however, we know that we are the Cinderella, the team that was good at sneaking in. The values on the pitch remain so the top four are objectively at another level so I don’t think it would make sense, indeed it would be presumptuous on our part, to prefer one team over another. We want to enjoy the moment, just as it was in February for the Final Eight in Turin. It’s not a straight match, so we’ll have more chances and we’ll try to do the best we can, knowing the difficulties but with ten months of living together that tell us that every now and then miracles come true.”
Once the play-off qualification has been archived, tomorrow there is one last match to be played at PalaCarrara before the start of the post-season: “Our fans, for what they have been throughout the year and for the closeness they have shown us demonstrated, they deserve to celebrate this milestone achieved thanks to them with a victory. We want to close the regular season with a good performance against a totally different team compared to the one we met on the first matchday: theirs is a different roster and in which the hierarchies have also changed. The distance compared to the October match is so wide that it would make no sense to make comparisons, but we must consider their strength and the important investments that the club has made to change the season. They have important individuals: Mannion, above all, is a Euroleague player loaned to Varese who did well to create the opportunity to sign him. We will try to have an excellent match, knowing that they have a lot of quality and talent.”
“The defeat in Varese was painful as it came, but it was a match that told us a lot about what we could have done together. That match didn’t give us points, but a lot of awareness: we had come from a very difficult month and a half of pre-season, but despite the difficulties encountered we were starting to give an idea of what could have been. It’s clear that no one expected, not even in the best of scenarios, to be here talking about play-offs and placing in the top eight, but the premises were already positive even after the match against Openjobmetis.”
