Virtus Bologna, Scariolo is blunt: “Start too slow”

Black Vu coach is blunt

Virtus Bologna failed to make a comeback in the game valid for the 18th day of the Euroleague, which saw the Felsinei engaged on their own parquet against the Lithuanians of Zalgiris Kaunas. The Black Vu had sewn up the initial disadvantage only to give in in the last minutes of the match.

On the result at Virtus Segafredo Arena the coach of the HCL team Sergio Scariolo expressed himself: “First of all congratulations to Zalgiris, they deserved to win. We had a really slow start then we struggled until the end of the third quarter. At the beginning of the last quarter Taylor made the difference and they rebuilt the gap which was not decisive at that moment but it knocked us down psychologically. The difference was in free throws and rebounds and that was the most influential aspect. Zalgiris played hard: we knew that rebounds would be crucial but we didn’t do enough. Let’s think about the next competition where we will have another great battle to play. It is true that there were several of their players who made the difference against, in a systematic way, our weaknesses in defense; players who have international experience. Behind then we did not have enough energy because when we went to help defensively we could not get the rebound. Nothing illogical, we have to be both in one-on-one and in defensive help more consistent, bad and present. We don’t have ranking anxiety, we are not a team that can afford to have ranking anxiety: we compete, we lost a game that in good shape we could have won and we have won games against more established teams.”

“Mentally we have to be able to manage moments, we have to get used to this: even if you start a game badly we have to know that there is time to straighten it out. Obviously, the effort you make to get back into the game then you can pay for it in a situation where we are not in a brilliant moment of form and we have some players with physical problems,” concluded the Virtus coach.