Trieste extols Matteo Cotelli: "You can breathe basketball" here;
The 82-86 in the land of Giulia further launches Germani Brescia, still leading Serie A on equal points with Virtus Bologna. In Trieste, however, Lombardi coach Matteo Cotelli wanted to emphasize a particular aspect: the atmosphere he breathed in a hall that left him breathless, even beyond the technical aspects of a game won not without suffering.
“Everything about this hall and this atmosphere speaks and breathes basketball. An aspect that is certainly not common in Italy,” Cotelli remarked at the end of the evening. “So I want to congratulate Trieste for the energy and physicality they put on the court. I would be so sorry if they were not in the LBA next year. In fact, it would be a huge disappointment. And we knew that this is one of the most difficult courts to go and win. That’s why Brescia’s success is wanted all the way.”
“During the game we suffered,” Cotelli added. “These aspects also help us improve and become even more of a team than we already are. Trieste’s players scored a lot, so our work on defense and rebounding to contain them was really important. We have to be happy with tonight’s performance. Especially since in the first half I saw a fairly passive Brescia, which suffered the energy of the opponents. Despite this, however, we managed to stick to the game.”
Words of great respect also from the other star of the evening. Trieste Basketball coach Francesco Taccetti chose to look at the glass half full despite the defeat, emphasizing the value of his team’s performance: “I believe that tonight we managed to prove to ourselves that we are capable of competing with the top of the class. Between now and the end of the season that is exactly what we want to continue to do.” A clear message, which sounds like a declaration of intent for the end of the season.
Taccetti then analyzed in detail the dynamics of the game, identifying a decisive factor in the reversal of the inertia in the second half: “We were good, even if Brescia’s second unit is the one that often makes the difference on defense and allows them to change games. But we can’t think that only because of that Trieste’s second half was bad. Maybe we made some mistakes in our choices, but this will serve us to learn and aim to do better. This match for us must be just a source of confidence.”
The challenge tonight had a special flavor also for personal reasons. Taccetti, in fact, worked in Brescia from 2022 to 2024 on Alessandro Magro’s staff, right alongside Matteo Cotelli, thus finding himself facing Germani as an opponent for the first time. A crossroads that made the confrontation between the two coaches even more meaningful, against the backdrop of a project, the Trieste one, that the coach from Trieste wants to continue to grow: “We want to work further to improve our level of aggressiveness on offense. We still have to work, knowing that we have at our disposal a lot of talent and a lot of guys who are good at going to the basket.”
It is worth mentioning that Brescia showed up at PalaTrieste with a new pawn on the roster: Jayden Nunn, a 2003-born U.S. guard who arrived to replace the injured CJ Massinburg. The young American, signed after the conclusion of his season with the Austin Spurs in the G-League, had ended the regular season with a 13.3-point average in 33 games. A graft that Cotelli was able to exploit on a night when every contribution proved valuable in bringing home two crucial points in the race for the top.
