Coach Simone Pianigiani talked this morning about the upcoming road game in Moscow, against Khimki. “They are going to be a lot more unpredictable given Alexey Shved’s return, because he is the kind of player who can create for himself and for his teammates, as well. On top of that, they have a lot of versatility among their big men: they can play with a traditional line-up and also with two nominal fives capable to hurt anybody by playing inside and out, like Malcolm Thomas and Jordan Mickey. We should pay a lot of attention to this, make sure to keep them under control and possibly try to establish our tempo and make them run after us”.

Olimpia’s head coach is still refusing to look at the standing. “We never did and this kind of attitude brought us where we are. It’s not important to be a step in or a step out of the top eight, it’s important that we are still in the mix and in spite of the schedule being almost prohibitive from now on we want to try to stay in this position until the end”.