After an unchracteristic week off, because of the FIBA windows, Olimpia flew to Vitoria for its EuroLeague road game number 8 of the season (4-3 is the record), right before the schedule makes a downturn of 360 degrees with a sequence of sky-high difficult home games, next week against Panathinaikos and the ensuing week against Real Madrid and Fenerbahce in the temporary home of the Allianz Cloud, the arena formerly known as Palalido. Basically, Olimpia will face one after the other the last three EuroLeague champion. But before looking too far ahead, there is this battle to fight in Vitoria, against a team that is currently paying a price to its road record but has won four games at gome. More than that, Baskonia is riding a four-game winning streak at home, after beating Dubai, Efes, Bologna, Bayern. It will be a tough game, for sure, with a lot of storylines. Baskonia is coached by Paolo Galbiati, who twice coached Peppe Poeta, Olimpia’s new head man; he coached Quinn Ellis in Trento and the team has as its first offensive option a former Olimpia player, Timothè Luwawu-Cabarrot. Olimpia has two former Baskonia players too, Shavon Shields and Nico Mannion (he is out, though). This is also a match-up historically favorable to the home team: Olimpias counts only three wins in Vitoria in its history, the last one in 2020/21 season. It approaches this game plagued by some absences (Marko Guduric for example stayed behind, in Milan, in order to complete his recovery program restarted after the Belgrade game) but Lorenzo Brown in back after some time. Overall, Olimpia won five of the last six games and got back on track. However, the parity is impressive: two wins or two losses are separating the league-leading team to the one walking the fine line of play-in and elimination. Looking at the numbers, the difference is in the efficiency of both team inside and out. Baskonia is the best EuroLeague team in two-point shooting with 61.5 percent (Olimpia is onverting 53.4 percent of its two-pointers), because of its bigs ability at finishing around the rim, see Diop and Diakite, and the fastbreak opportunities generated by the perimeter players (Luwawu-Cabarrot is leading the league in thee-point shooting but he is also a 61.2 percent two-point shooter). Olimpia is shooting 38.2 percent on threes (fifth overall) compared to Baskonia’s 33.2 percent despite Luwawu-Cabarrot and the specialist Markus Howard. Who will be able to establish its best weapons will win the games. Baskonia should recover Howard (seven appearances so far) and Trent Forrest (four) among the guards, but Kobi Simmons is shining after he was supposed to stay only for two months. Baskonia’s rotation is huge, with five or six guards who can stay on the court. In the last few days, Hamidou Diallo left the team and was recplaced by the Lithuanian sharpshooter, Gytis Radzevicius from Vilnius.
NOTES – Baskonia-Olimpia Milano is scheduled to be played on Friday, December 5th, at the Fernando Buesa Arena in Vitoria at 20:30.
REFEREES – Borys Ryzhyk (Ukrain), Piotr Pastusiak (Poland), Dragan Porobic (Bosnia).
INJURY REPORT – Marko Guduric will follow a separate work, scheduled to start during the break and will return to the team next week. Nico Mannion, Diego Flaccadori, Ousmane Diop and Nate Sestina are not available.
COACH PEPPE POETA- “We face a team coming off six straight home wins between EuroLeague and Spanish league, so it is clearly in good shape. Baskonia tries to play an uptempo kind of game, with a lot of possessions and very talented guards. The first point of our game plan is to be extremely good in our transition defense to make sure they don’t go off too easily, because at that point they would become even more dangerous than they already are, especially on their home court.”
BASKONIA OUTLOOK – Trent Forrest and Markus Howard, the two starting guards at the beginning of the season, missed several games due to assorted injuries, but both should be now fully recovered. Forrest, a powerfully built point guard in his second season in Vitoria, has averaged 11.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 5.8 assists in his four apperances. Howard, in his fourth season in Vitoria, is a small but powerful guard with unlimited shooting range, who is attempting far more three-pointers than two-pointers. In seven games, he’s averaged 7.0 points per game, but his career average is 15.0 points and he can go off at any moment. Without them, the team counted on Kobi Simmons, Markus Nowell, and Matteo Spagnolo. Simmons was signed temporarily but is playing well, averaging 10.5 points and 3.9 assists over 21 minutes on the court, and is shooting 34.8 percent from three. Coming out of Arizona, he played 42 NBA games but didn’t find a permanent home until moving to China last season. Nowell is a lightning-fast 5-foot-10 point guard, raised in New York and emerging at Kansas State, who is having his first experience outside the United States after trying to make the team in Toronto and then Houston. He’s averaging 6.5 points per game on 62.1 percent shooting from two, and adding 4.0 assists per game. Matteo Spagnolo is the Italian national team’s point guard, and moved from Alba Berlin to Vitoria, where he’s averaging 5.8 points and 2.8 assists in 16 minutes on the court per game. He’s also shooting well from three (50.0 percent). The deep guard department is completed by shooter Rafa Villar, who grew up in Barcelona but was picked up this summer from Lleida. Timothè Luwawu-Cabarrot, who generally comes off the bench, averages nearly 27 minutes on the court. His numbers are extraordinary, though: 19.6 points and 3.2 rebounds per game, 61.2 percent from two, 47.4 percent from three, 90.5 percent from the free throw line. The Lithuanian sharpshooter, Gytis Radzevicius from Vilnius, was added right before the game. The power forward is the Lithuanian Tadas Sedekerskis, now a veteran player in Vitoria (170 EuroLeague appearances), who is averaging 8.0 points per game on 78.4 percent on two-pointers, who is adding 4.8 rebounds per night. His backup is the Latvian Rodions Kurucs, who’s averaging 6.0 points per game on 76.9 percent shooting on twos. The two centers are both gifted with enormous athleticism: Khalifa Diop is a Senegalese who came up in Gran Canaria (he won the Eurocup), was a 2022 NBA draft second round pick (number 39), and the following year moved to Vitoria, where he now averages 3.9 points and 3.8 rebounds per game (73.3 percent on twos); Mamadi Diakite is from Guinea, but grew up in the United States and won the NCAA championship at Virginia. In 2021, he was on the roster of the Milwaukee Bucks, and won the NBA title. He’s played 66 NBA games overall and is having his first European season. He averages 5.1 points and 3.2 rebounds per game, shooting 62.9 percent from two, but can also occasionally shoot three-pointers.
THE BASKONIA CONNECTION – Shavon Shields spent two seasons in Vitoria and was a member of the Liga championship winning team in 2020. He played 59 EuroLeague games in Vitoria with 569 points scored. 63 more games were played in the Spanish league with 711 points scored. Nico Mannion played for Baskonia during the 2023/24 season with 8 games played and 48 points scored. Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot played 24 games for Olimpia during the 2022/23 season and scored 226 points. Finally, Peppe Poeta played in Vitoria during the 2013/14 season with 10 EuroLeague appearances and 39 points. Baskonia’s head coach, Paolo Galbiati is a product of Olimpia youth academy where he stayed for years and won the Under 17 Italian championship in 2013 before becoming, under Jasmin Repesa, a member of the coaching staff. As a coach, Galbiati has won an Italian Cup at the Turin helm, and his point guard was Peppe Poeta. He coached Poeta in Cremona too.
