“This is the game I was expecting to have in Venezia, coming back from Cologne and the Final Four where we spent a mountain of energy, physically and mentally. Instead, it happened today,” Coach Ettore Messina explained after a 83-77 loss to Virtus Bologna in Game 1 of the Italian League championship series. Game 2 is scheduled to be played on Monday, in Milano.

Olimpia started well, building a 6-0 early lead, but it wasn’t indicative of what was about to come. Gradually, Virtus took control and expanded its lead to 14 before halftime (Olimpia closed the gap to nine, with a 5-0 run going into halftime). The third quarter belonged to Virtus again: the lead exploded to 18 points, because Milano couldn’t hit a shot, had to overcome a lot of foul trouble that forced the use of many small line-ups. When the game looked almost over, Olimpia raised its defensive game, didn’t shoot suddenly well, but grabbed a lot of offensive rebounds and second chances points allowed the team to comeback with two, with slightly more than four minutes remaining in the game. That was when Stefan Markovic hit a deep three that changed momentum again. “It was the shot that killed us, but overall our game was mediocre. Our defense was very bad for at least 30 minutes, offensively we played individually and never created an advantage for a teammate. When we did, we missed a lot of open shots. We played bad, we can improve everything and we’ll try to do it on Monday,” Messina said.

Olimpia went 20-for-60 from the field, hit eight threes out of 32, and stayed in the game attacking Bologna’s defense to get to the line, going 29-for-35. Zach LeDay and Sergio Rodriguez led the scorers with 16 points, Gigi Datome scored 12 of his 15 points in the first half, Kevin Punter added 12, but foul trouble limited him to 16 minutes on the court, just 2:30 in the first half. “It was a bad night within a tremendous season, hopefully it is just one night. We’ll try to do a better job next time,” Messina finally said.