In the last two matches of the regular season, Virtus’ objective will be to close this phase in first place in the rankings and then face the playoffs from the best possible position. What happens from the quarter-finals onwards, however, will be important to decide what the foundations on which to build the new team will be. It’s been two years since the Black V has been playing the final series with the tank in reserve and what happens in this last part of the season will also serve to understand who is able to handle a busy pace of commitments with more than 80 games spread from the end of September to the first half of June. An agenda which, among other things, should be packed with commitments according to the intentions of the club which would also like to reach the Euroleague playoffs in 2025. There are players like the captain Marco Belinelli, the Italian-American playmaker Daniel Hackett and the young star Alessandro Pajola who are in Juventus’ future projects without ifs or buts, while for others like Toko Shengelia or Achille Polonara they are ready to make the barricades if someone came forward and presented them with an attractive proposal.
All the others, however, are to be verified in these last stages of the Italian Serie A. From this point of view, coach Luca Banchi has a remarkable game on his hands. Compared to the Euroleague, in the matches played in Italy he will always have to keep two foreigners in the stands. For the moment it was decided to rest Bryant Duston to give space to Ante Zizic and favor his inclusion, but it is not certain that in the playoffs this selection will not put Jordan Mickey on the margins of the rotations while as regards the wingers the growth of Abi Abass (yesterday Pozzecco confirmed his return to the national team, thanks to the injury in Procida) and the return of Isaia Cordinier have overshadowed Ognjen Dobric who, in the end, could be replaced by Rihards Lomazs. Since his sudden arrival on the Juventus bench, the coach from Grosseto has shown that he wants to manage the group by immediately clarifying what the hierarchies were and if one looks at the results one cannot say that this method did not prove effective even if there were some very long moments of decline in the central part of the season.
One of the certain things relating to the future is that Virtus will change its technical sponsor with the company of president Massimo Zanetti who will say goodbye to the Bolognese company Macron, a true European giant in the sector, on June 30th. The collaboration began in 2009. After 15 years the situations have changed and so this path which still saw the black V celebrate a promotion to Serie A, a Basketball Champions League, a championship and a Eurocup has come to an end.
In the meantime, yesterday the team trained in separate groups in anticipation of Sunday, when Segafredo will be busy in Casale Monferrato, in Tortona’s den.
