Peppe Poeta dismisses Olimpia Milano’s excuses and takes the blame

Peppe Poeta isn’t looking for excuses after his team’s loss in Verona and is taking full responsibility. The Olimpia Milano coach offers a clear-eyed analysis of a game in which his team—coming off a back-to-back EuroLeague series—failed to come out with the right mindset from the start.

“Congratulations to Verona—they played with great heart. I take full responsibility for the loss. We didn’t come out with the right mindset, just like against Baskonia. We need to fix a lot of things, and we need to do it quickly. The fact that we’re a new team and don’t know each other well is over. We need to learn to come out the right way and play as a unified team.”

Poeta then focuses on the offensive struggles and the positive aspects shown in the second half of the game: “As for the offense, we need to be more fluid. I’ll take the second-half defense as a positive—the substitutions paid off—but we made some silly mistakes down the stretch, and they came back from our +4 lead. We’ll try to do better.”

On the different approach between the two teams, the coach has no doubts: “Absolutely. It’s never easy after a EuroLeague back-to-back; we have to learn to win even the ugly games. This happens, but I’m not talking about the result—I’m talking about the attitude in the first two quarters. On the very first possession, they grabbed four offensive rebounds—that’s unacceptable.”