Olimpia returns to the court in Bologna, on Monday at 18:00 against Happycasa Brindisi in the first Supercup semifinal game. The other game, to follow, will involve Reyer Venezia and Virtus Bologna. After the win over Treviso in the quarterfinal, Olimpia practiced on Sunday afternoon in Bologna at the old Paladozza arena. 14 players were available: only Troy Daniels is missing, obviously he is not with the team due to the injury he suffered in practice earlier in the week. Brindisi, a team Olimpia already faced in the Supercup semifinal in 2014, defeated Sassari in the quarterfinal. Olimpia has won the last four editions of the Super Cup in which the team has qualified for, including last season, and has made six of the last seven finals, skipping only the 2019 one which the team didn’t qualify for. The team is looking for its 7th final appearance in the last eight seasons.
COACH ETTORE MESSINA – “Brindisi, as always, plays well in the sense that everyone always knows what to do. Compared to last year they are different, they probably don’t have the creativity of the various Thompsons, Harrison, and Willis, but they are more solid and very disciplined. We will have to be ready because they have a lot of physicality and they appeared to me fairly well in terms of conditioning”.
BRINDISI – Brindisi qualified for the final stage of the Super Cup by virtue of the third place in the league last season. In their quarterfinal game, they defeated Dinamo Sassari 78-66 with 21 points and 13 rebounds by Nick Perkins, one of the five returning players from last year. The others are the shooter Alessandro Zanelli, the forward Raphael Gaspardo, the center Mattia Udom and Riccardo Visconti, another excellent shooter. Jeremy Chappell, a veteran of the Italian league, in his fifth seasons here, had already played in Brindisi during the 2018/19 season. Nick Perkins averaged 13.3 points and 5.7 rebounds per game last year. The newcomers are Nathan Adrian, a power forward from West Virginia, in his third year in Europe, the last in Bordeaux, France; the point guard Josh Perkins from Gonzaga, last year with Partizan Belgrade; Myles Carter, a center who was in Turkey last year; and finally, the Argentine with an Italian passport Lucio Redivo who was playing in Casale Monferrato last season.
HISTORY VS. BRINDISI – There are 33 previous games between Olimpia Milano and Brindisi, with 25 wins for Olimpia, 12-2 in Milan and 10-6 in Brindisi; 3-0 on a neutral court. However, it should be noted that nine games date back to the Italian Cup, including the 2017 quarterfinal won in Rimini by Olimpia, and one at the 2014 Super Cup, in Sassari.
THE BRINDISI CONNECTION – Riccardo Moraschini played only one year in Brindisi, but it was the one in which he won the Italian MVP award. In all, Moraschini in Brindisi played 33 games averaging 12.3 points, 2.8 assists, 3.3 rebounds per game, all career highs, with a top of 30 points in a single game against Trieste. One of Ettore Messina’s assistants, Marco Esposito is from Brindisi, and was an assistant for the local team for three seasons before coming to Milan. Francesco Vitucci, head coach of Brindisi, was an assistant to Ettore Messina in Treviso.
