Ettore Messina apologizes: ‘I did something stupid’

The words of Ettore Messina

Coach Ettore Messina commented on the sprint win over Brescia: “In the last quarter we played a last quarter that Cesare Rubini would have liked, we stopped thinking too much and showed better things. Obviously we put together people who had never been seen together plus not having two point guards — and afterwards the third one got hurt — doesn’t help to build the game. The bad thing is that in the third quarter and the partial could have cost us the game The good thing is that by doing more energetic things on offense and defense in the fourth period we took the game back. In the end we could have won both of them, but we had built an important lead that could have been decisive. At minus three seconds I must admit that I made a rookie mistake, because after the minus-one basket I should have called time-out and advanced the ball. Unfortunately, stupid things happen, I apologized to the team, I hope it doesn’t happen again. I finish epr to say that it was nice to honor two figures like Cesare Rubini and Franco Casalini. Our people were also very positive in this.”

On Melli: “He’s been a key player, he’s our captain, and he showed that with the national team as well, and it allowed us to then have seven minutes of our starting point guard who showed us what he can do. With him and Voigtmann we opened up the court, had more mobility and created space for Kevin Pangos to create. That was what we did last year with Nicolo and Mitoglou as well. To use the low post presence more will take time, I don’t know how much. But with the recovery of maybe Shavon Shields as well, things could improve.”

On prospects: “I’d like to be optimistic and speak in hyperbole but I’m glad we won by one with a good last quarter. Then we were missing players, someone played opaque contests, the starting point guard played 14 minutes because he couldn’t do more, that may be promising but I won’t go any further. I think today we realized that we are in so much precisely to cope with these situations.”