The coach of Virtus Bologna Luca Banchi he was a guest yesterday on the Basketland Live broadcast, reached by telephone as soon as he landed in Latvia to train the national team in view of the Pre-Olympic which will take place at home in Riga. Banchi answered the questions that covered the entire season.
Relentless calendar. “Our season had no breaks, we lived it all in one breath right from the Super Cup, always playing with great determination, with initial growth and then an inevitable decline given the calendar. Milan had a EuroLeague where in the end they had the opportunity to plan the season finale of the championship in advance, while we were there fighting until the last ball for the Euroleague playoffs and first place in the regular season with five consecutive final victories was decided by episodes, especially in game 1 and game 3. Maybe they are better than us but I don’t think they are stronger, we came close to achieving the feat but now we move forward with this belief. The market may widen the gap but I’m not worried: now I’m reading about Nebo, Dimitrijevic, for them. and big names, but we will work to fill the gap in another way. They have so many resources, in the playoffs they had many out, they will take plenty but that won’t make the difference. We will keep the bar straight, we will try to make the team not necessarily high-sounding names but rather hungry ones who see Bologna as a possibility for valorisation. And this makes me proud, trying to unite individual and team objectives.”
Confirmed coach. “I’m in Bologna under contract, here there’s a lot of hot air, if spreading rumors were paid, fewer would come out. Nobody will ever deny it: yesterday I heard about an offer for 3 million to go to Trapani, my bank will ask me what happened to them. We’ll see if the club were to make other decisions, but at this moment I haven’t had any talks with the club. For the rest, I note that in recent months Virtus has tried to redesign its balance, so the priority is to give the management time. to fix things to continue to have a bright future.”
Italian Cup or Championship. Where is there regret? “In a playoff series there is more margin to correct mistakes than in the Italian Cup, where there are dry matches and where the emotional aspect is decisive. Those who talk about planning victories in this event don’t know what they’re talking about, which is beyond any prediction: recently Brescia won, which seemed on the verge of a crisis and then didn’t make the playoffs, and now Napoli. Not even Milan managed to win it, I happened to win it with Siena starting from fifth place in the ranking. We didn’t get there in great shape, during the desperate search for the EuroLeague playoffs, well done to Reggio Emilia in magnifying our problems but it was a daring match which, if played again, perhaps wouldn’t end in the same way. The recriminations in the Italian Cup are relative. I feel more sorry for the championship, we have shown that we can play every possession and I have never considered Milan truly superior to us.”
Technical/tactical choices that you would and wouldn’t make again. “There are many, not just one, but our work forces us to make choices and reaction times are what they are and do not allow us to evaluate the other side of the coin. It may happen that some of them turn out to be right and others wrong, then you have to learn from the mistake so as not to repeat it, but I don’t feel like pointing out anything specifically, it wouldn’t do justice to me or to our work or even to the team.”
Cacok’s injury. “I can’t say, there is no counterproof. In this job you must be ready to manage emergencies with flexibility and the ability to find solutions. This created stress for us, forcing us to take timely interventions just when after a few months the player seemed to have found the right balance. We were very sad to lose him.”
You would work with him again. “There are strong uncertainties regarding recovery times for a rather rare and anomalous type of injury, there are no expected recovery times. We are happy that the boy has decided to spread his contract. We hope that this boy will return to wear the Virtus shirt, due to the bad luck he has had and the sacrifices he is making.”
Zizis will be able to make a difference next year. “We hope that Ante, like everyone else, can find the right continuity of performance for his caliber. His insertion was not an easy one, entering the race with little time during the week. We hope it will be a fruitful summer of work to arrive in ideal conditions, in the end he also suffered from an injury.”
Luca Banchi’s season. “I’m used to being in the gym, I leave the chatter to others. I self-criticize those who may have been heroes in order to improve. A season in which I took charge of a team that I hadn’t contributed to building, and I tried to do mine as quickly as possible and to help keep the performance regime high. Having seen Virtus at the top of each event filled me with pride and awareness that it will be the same next year.”
