A nightmare night finished the way it started with a painful 77-72 defeat in the Italian Cup championship game. Napoli won deservedly after leading most of the night with margin going back and forth between three, five, seven, nine points. Olimpia made its moved very late trying to shake off a terrible offensive night making three consecutive three-pointers, the first by Mirotic, the other two by Shavon Shields, who had been scoreless from the field up to that points. A 9-0 run, sustained by the defense, gave Olimpia a one-point lead. However, Jacob Pullen responded making a step back three that returned the lead to Napoli with 13 seconds left. Olimpia had one last opportunity but the inbound play execution was bad and the game over.

“We picked the wrong night to make a step back after two excellent games – Coach Ettore Messina remarked at the end – It is painful because it was an opportunity to win a trophy. Our defense was generally medicore, offensively we dribbled and passed the ball in a worrisome way. We know we failed.” Looking back, Nicolò Melli’s second and third fouls in the first half proved to be impactful because Olimpis’ Captain was really something right from the beginning but at to stay on the bench too much in the first half. He set the tone early, then had an outstanding start to the third quarter when he scored consistently driving to the bucket. He finished with a team-high 20 points. He was enormous, but he wasn’t enought to pull the win.

Nikola Mirotic added 19 points and Shavon Shields 10. It wasn’t the game Olimpia needed to play. Defensively, it allowed too many easy shots at the rim. Offensively, not only three-point shooting was missing, the team collectively missed at least six or seven at-the-rim shots. “Unfortunately, it is the story of our season. When we get up, we take some steps back despite this being a very experienced team,” Messina admitted.