Basketball, sigh of relief at home Italy

Gallinari will be thereà

Italy-Lithuania, the much-hyped match since the December draw, will be played on Saturday, July 6 at 10 p.m. Italian time (live on DAZN, Sky Sport Max and Now). It will be one of the two semifinals at the Pre-Olympic Tournament in San Juan and will certainly be a tough test for the Azzurri, who will have to quickly erase the defeat against Puerto Rico to continue cultivating the five-ring dream.

Optimism about the condition of Danilo Gallinari, who exited prematurely in the final of the match against Puerto Rico: following instrumental examinations carried out in the Puerto Rican morning, è emerged a slight injury to the right knee that will not preventà the player to be available to the Azzurro technical staff for the semifinal against Lithuania.

“Tournaments like these always reserve big surprises – said Pozzecco -. We have seen in these days results that have not respected the initial prediction but there ’è not to be surprised, basketball is going in this direction and by now there are so many Nationals equipped at a high level. It è not our case, because Puerto Rico è a strong team, it is only three positions away from us in the world ranking and è growing”.

“Going forward we will have to get used to the fact that the bar is being raised diffusely. We have a tough and complicated but at the same time challenging game ahead of us. We were competitive against Puerto Rico and we want to be competitive again tomorrow. We are here to compete and we will do so until the end” added the coach.