Coach Luca Banchi talked with the media the day before Game 1 of the Euroleague quarterfinals: “We face a formidable opponent who won the regular season, was one of the best teams in a tough Top 16 group and they’re also very familiar with themselves, with six players returning since last year and two more that came back, David Blu e Sofo Schortsianitis, who’s a big factor in the Euroleague. We need to be careful and not letting their talent turning on. We earned our right to be here, we’ll play before a packed house which is not an exception but it’s becoming the rule. So we are ready to live some special nights with passion and pride. When we approached the competition first and the Top 16 later we were discarded as inadequate. But we improved and responded”.
Nicolò Melli spoke too: “We’re here because of our effort, we deserve to be here and now we want to enjoy the show but at the same time there’s a lot of work to be done. We don’t want to stop here in spite of Maccabi being more experienced and being very tough with a dominant big man and the ability to use many different kind of line-ups”.