L’Olimpia Milan closes the regular season with a narrow victory at PalaRadi against Vanoli Cremona. So spoke coach Ettore Messina in the press room commenting on the success: “I would like to congratulate Mr. Vanoli, Coach Cavina and all of Cremona for a great season. They expressed quality of play, cohesion, mentality. A year that is worth more than simple salvation. We have complicated the situation for ourselves. life with a terrible start, both in attack and defense which forced us to chase the whole match. I consider it a positive thing to have remained there, fighting until the end, despite the many difficulties encountered. In the end, we won with some decisive defensive possessions as well as the individual plays of some, especially the basket obviously by Nicolò Melli. They were light, they started by scoring I think six triples in the first quarter, and at that point everything became difficult also because we didn’t have the usual balance”, began the red and white coach.
Messina continues his analysis, underlining how the return of an injured player, in this case Mirotic, forced the team to find balance on the pitch: “Unfortunately, that’s the story of this season: one day out, another day out and every time you have to rebuild certain balances as happened today with the return of Mirotic. At some times he gave us very good things, at others we found ourselves in difficulty. Now we will work to find balance from the first possession of the series with Trento waiting for us. Before the match, speaking with the other coaches, I said that if we hadn’t won by twenty we would have risked losing. This is what happened. They could have entered the field a little satisfied, they are situations in which you perhaps subconsciously think about not getting hurt. But once they got off to a flying start, the quality of their game, here among other things they beat all the best teams, emerged together with the desire to end the season with a great victory. In the end it could have been as good for them as it was for us.”
