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Olimpia led deep into the fourth then threw the Napoli game away

09/01/2023
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Even in a rest night for Billy Baron and Kyle Hines. Olimpia did enough to win the game overcoming a 11-point first quarter deficit and a nightmarish 2-for-21 three-point shooting night to buio a 10-point lead with five minutes left in the game. Then everything was thrown away. A Jordan Howard 4-point play was allowed, Napoli came back led by the crowd enthusiasm, but again with 29 seconds left the second three of the night (Nicolò Melli from the right corner) opened up a three-point lead with Brandon Davies (who had 26 of his 28 points after the first half) at the line. Uncharacteristically he missed both, then Devon Hall made a foul on Howard on the act of shooting a three. With 13 seconds left Howard made all his free throw attempts and tied the game one more time. Still, Olimpia had 13 seconds to win the game but the inbound play was ill executed and so was Napoli to have a shot. Olimpia’s defense held on and forced overtime. But the energy was gone and Napoli won 87-81. It is the fourth overtime loss of the season for Olimpia across all the competitions. “We had a good second half but the last minute was a bad one, we made every possible mistake, defensively and offensively. I don’t even want to know if there was a foul when Howard attempted the tying three because we should’ve not taken a chance. It was a night with many turnovers and bad three-point shooting indicative of a lack of focus. And we paid dearly for it maybe even too much in the sense that we had the game won,” Coach Messina said at the end.

JOHANNES VOIGTMANN
DESHAUN THOMAS
NAZ MITROU-LONG