Another short rest game for Olimpia, on the eve of a very demanding week (Baskonia on the road, Bologna at home, Trento on the road again). Napoli is coming to Unipol Forum. It is a team that after winning the Italian Cup last season has struggled a little bit, probably affected by some injuries, especially the one that hit Kevin Pangos. Winless so far, Napoli is on the verge of correcting its roster and has already signed the very experienced guard, Erick Green. Olimpia is coming off a tough loss with Efes in the EuroLeague and needs to regain confidence, despite being clearly shorthanded at the center spot. However, Guglielmo Caruso, after a promising game in Scafati, had another encouraging outing against Efes, scoring six points and adding six rebounds in less than 16 minutes on the court. He will be called to do it all over again against his hometown team on Saturday. “Our goal is to regain our defensive efficiency – assistant coach Mario Fioretti said – focusing on the scoring ability of Charles Manning and Zach Copeland.”
Tip off time on Saturday, 26 October is 20:30.
NAPOLI BASKET OUTLOOK – After winning the Italian Cup last season, and failing to reach the playoffs, Napoli Basket has changed a lot of its roster, so much so that the only real returning player is Giovanni De Nicolao (1.8 points, 2.5 assists and 2.5 rebounds on average). In fact, second-year coach Igor Milicic is basically rebuilding the team from scratch. At the moment, the permanent starters are the shooter Zach Copeland and center Leonardo Totè. Copeland (13.3 points and 3.5 assists on average) attempts over nine three-point shots per game (32.4 percent accuracy). Totè is producing 14.8 points per game with 71.4 percent two-point shooting, confirming his offensive skills (he also captures 4.0 rebounds per game). Kevin Pangos (10.0 points and 5.0 assists per game) would probably have been the third permanent starter if an injury hadn’t caused him to miss the team’s last two outings. The other key player is Charles Manning jr who so far has always scored in double figures and last Saturday, in his first start, scored 22 points in Cremona. So far, he has 14.8 points per game with 60.7 percent two-point shooting. Napoli has signed the experienced guard Erick Green, who has had a long European career among other places in Siena, Kazan and Olympiacos (he was in Treviso too, a couple of seasons ago). Among the wingers, in addition to De Nicolao, there is the former Varese player Tomas Woldetensae (6.0 points and 3.0 rebounds on average), a player who is part of the national team. Among the big men, around Totè there are the Croat Dario Dreznjak (7.0 points and 3.3 rebounds per game), the British Deane Williams (6.0 points and 5.8 rebounds on average) and the shooter Kaspar Trejer (9.0 points, 70.0 percent from two).
