Oops, Olimpia did it again. For the 27th time it’s the Italian League Champion. Olimpia won in Reggio Emilia 74-70 because of a dramatic second half when the defense step up and many guys as always brought something offensively. Olimpia trailed by as many as 11 points in the first half, but the second was another story. Reggio Emilia, unbeaten at home during the entire post-season, resisted the assault many times, keeping the lead, then exchanging leads over and over again. Finally, Olimpia took control, then a couple of turnovers demanded more attention in the closing seconds. But it was a 74-70 win, 4-2 in the series and the second championship in three years. Rakim Sanders, the Italy Cup MVP, was named MVP once more. He was the MVP last year too. He completed another strong post-season. “It was a difficult season because we changed a lot, suffered many injiuries and had to deal with many different personalities in order to develop the right chemistry. I expected to do a little bit better in terms of quality, but we won the Cup and we won the championship so we did fine. I did my job but my real job is starting now because we want to be competitive on a European level. We cannot compete with the richest teams but with scouting and players development we can definitely make some noise”, Coach Repesa said at the end. “We wanted a professional, serious team but we had more talent than we got credited for, just take a look at Gentile, Simon or Kalnietis – Olimpia’s President Livio Proli said – The key moment was in Berlin in January. We had a bad game, we didn’t go to sleep, we stayed up all night and everybody clarified what was needed to be clarified. We made some corrections and we came out stronger because of that. Now we feel like we need to be better in Europe, to be competitive in a very exciting Euroleague season. We’ll try”.