The last game before the Final Eight— an event that also involves a break in the EuroLeague season—is a Lombardy derby for Olimpia. Vanoli Cremona has been one of the season’s overachieving team so far: they nearly qualified for the Italian Cup and they haven’t lost their momentum. With an 8-10 record, they currently sit in eighth place tied with Udine. They lost the rising star Davide Casarin to and injury for a few weeks, but center Mattia Udom has been signed (he is not yet available for the game against Milan), approaches the game with some fatigue to overcome from playing 48 hours earlier against Dubai and the injuries that make a serious roster turnover an impossibility, especially 72 hours before the Italian Cup start.
Vanoli Cremona-Olimpia Milano is scheduled to be played on February 15th, at 20:00, in Cremona.
COACH EMILIO KOVACIC – “Cremona is a very dangerous team, especially when they play at home. They play very fast and look for early opportunities thanks to their athletic abilities and the fact that almost all of them can hit a three point shot. They will be somewhat penalized, playing without Davide Casarin, but their perimeter line is still talented enough to give any opposing team a lot of problems. This is going to be a good challenge for us and our guys will have to give it all they’ve got in order to win.”
CREMONA OUTLOOK – Point guard Aljami Durham, who has a distinguished college background, playing for prestigious programs such as Indiana and Providence, is averaging 14.1 points per game, shooting 37.7 percent from three, and dishing out 2.8 assists per game. Veteran Payton Willis is a talented offensive player who had a stellar season in Pistoia in 2023/24 before moving to Tenerife, only to return to Italy to play for Cremona. In the last round, he converted the three-point play that gave Cremona the win over Cantù. He currently averages 14.5 points, 4.0 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game. He’s shooting 35.9 percent from three on 7.3 attempts. The third guard is Davide Casarin (10.8 points and 4.8 assists per game), but he’s injured. The small forwards are Giovanni Veronesi, in his second season in the Italian league after his debut with Sassari, who averages 10.0 points per game shooting 54.7 percent from two, but is above all a long-range shooter (averaging 5.8 attempts at a 32.7 percent clip), and Tajion Jones (7.1 points and 2.6 rebounds), in his second year with Cremona after making his European debut in Leiden, Netherlands. Power forward Ousmane Ndiaye, a 6-foot-11 athletic big man, spent three years with Baskonia, then had stints with Palencia and Granada before moving to Cremona. A Senegalese, he declared for the NBA draft but was not selected: he’s averaging 10.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game, but he’s also an excellent three-point shooter (33.0 percent on 5.6 attempts), as he also demonstrated in the Milan game. The center is Ike Anigbobu, averaging 5.9 points and 6.3 rebounds per game, a player who is rapidly improving (also 0.9 blocks per game). The other two big men are Sasha Grant, who also made his national team debut and is a very physical player with great defensive habits (he is averaging 6.0 points and 2.6 rebounds per game), and Christian Burns (4.7 points and 2.1 rebounds per game), an experienced, multidimensional player with a lot of energy who is also shooting 41.4 percent from three.
THE CREMONACONNECTION – Pippo Ricci made his Italian league debut in Cremona, where he helped the club win an Italian Cup and played 70 games in two years. Peppe Poeta played for Cremona for the last two years of his career, making 48 Italian league appearances. Christian Burns played for Milan in the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons, with 58 Italian league appearances.
