Olimpia returned from its 50-minute battle in Istanbul on Saturday afternoon and will play tomorrow against Nutribullet Treviso, also coming off a dramatic victory in Reggio Emilia. For once, the opponent will also be playing less than 48 hours after its previous game. Olimpia will decide immediately before the game which lineup to deploy against an opponent who looks improved, after a very challenging week, with a deep turnover considering the imminence of two more EuroLeague games, this time at home, against Asvel and Olympiacos, and then the league game against Trapani. There will be no rest, therefore, even after the third road win of the European season. Treviso has been a traditional opponent since the Benetton days: this is a new club that has inherited the previous culture and tradition. Olimpia will face a very strong opponent in terms of offensive rebounding and with very talented guards like Abdur-Rahkman and Joe Ragland, one of the most experienced and successful players in European basketball.
Tip-off time on Sunday, November 9th is 17:00.
COACH EMILIO KOVACIC – “Treviso is better than its record might indicate. They have been able to score 90 or more points several times and are coming to Milan after the Reggio Emilia win, so we will have to pay attention their offensive talent. They are also first for offensive rebounds and they have the best Italian passer, Joe Ragland, who is a very experienced player. We know that, playing against a team with no pressure, we will have to play a 100 percent game in order to win, aware that the turnover will be deep after a very demanding week.”
NUTRIBULLET TREVISO OUTLOOK – The Nutribullet’s guards are Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman and Joe Ragland. Abdur-Rahkman, who previously played in Pesaro, Italy, before moving to Darussafaka and then to Bilbao, is scoring 15.8 points per game, using his athleticism to get closer to the rim, but he’s also shooting a lot of three-pointers, averaging nearly eight attempts per game. Ragland, nearly 36, is also a powerful player: left-handed, a great shooter, he has high-level European experience, spanning several leagues, including the Italian league. He’s averaging 13.8 points, 9.0 assists, 2.0 steals per game, and is shooting 41.2 percent from three-point range. With 33.8 minutes per game, he’s also one of the most used players in the entire league. The forwards are the Lithuanian Osvaldas Olisevicius and Kruize Pinkins, both veterans of the Italian league. Olisevicius is the team’s leading scorer with 16.8 points per game, but he also averages 5.6 rebounds per night, 2.4 of which come from the offensive board. He’s currently shooting 8.0 three-pointers per game with 37.5 percent shooting. Pinkins is a power forward who played in Casale and Turin, before spending three years in Scafati. He averages 15.3 points per game and is the team’s leading rebounder with 7.0 rebounds per game, 3.8 of which are offensive rebounds. Dangerous from beyond the arc, he’s shooting 57.1 percent from three, despite attempting fewer than two shots per game. Finally, he’s almost perfect from the free throw line (92.9 percent). The fifth foreign player is center DeShawn Stephens, another highly experienced player. At 36, he’s been seen extensively in Italy, most recently in Sassari before spending the last two seasons in Patras, Greece, and Cluj, Romania, where he also played in the Eurocup. He’s currently averaging 11.2 points per game on 75.0 percet two-point shooting, adding to it 5.4 rebounds per game. The Italian core includes David Torresani, one of the league’s most promising young players (he is averaging 6.4 points and 2.2 assists per game, shooting 35.3 percent from three), forward Federico Miaschi (7.4 points and 3.0 rebounds per game), big men Matteo Chillo (6.2 points per game, shooting 35.7 percent from three), and Francesco Pellegrino. Treviso has so far been unable to use point guard Briante Weber, a tough defender who played for Reggio Emilia last year, due to an injury.
TREVISO CONNECTION – Ettore Messina coached Treviso for three years during the Benetton era, winning an Italian league title and reaching the EuroLeague championship game in 2003, losing to Barcelona on the road. During those three years, Treviso won the Italian Cup three times. The current team inherited the role of Pallacanestro Treviso despite being a completely new club. David Torresani, 20, who last summer was a valuable member of the Italian National Team that won the European Under 20 championship, began playing basketball at Olimpia before his family moved abroad (before returning to Italy, in Treviso). Joe Ragland played for Milan during the 2014/15 season, with 40 Italian league appearances and 442 points scored.
