Open Gym for a week of informal workouts, tests, reactivation routines, physicals and then Olimpia’s season will really begin on August 26th. Six pre-season friendlies including two scrimmages behind closed doors and the grand finale in Crete with two EuroLeague-level games preceding the Bologna Super Cup and finally the two road games that will start the season, in Trieste and the Principality of Monaco. This in summary is the menu for Olimpia’s assault on the new season.

There are eight new faces coming in: for Armoni Brooks it is a European debut; the others are Neno Dimitrijevic, Leandro Bolmaro, Fabien Causeur, Josh Nebo, David McCormack and Ousmane Diop plus Zach LeDay who has returned home. There are three EuroLeague rookies and four veterans; six players have never played in Italy before.

There are new faces in the coaching staff too, with the addition of Alberto Seravalli as assistant and Giuseppe Mangone as Player Development Coach. The average age of the current roster is 28.2 years per player, low by EuroLeague standards. Fabien Causeur, Nikola Mirotic and Pippo Ricci are the only ones over 30; Shields, LeDay and Tonut have exactly 30.

Olimpia will be able to begin the season with no aggregate players and for the first time in years nobody needs some more time off to recover from the National teams commitments.