Olimpia’s 42nd participation in the Italian league playoffs begins at the Unipol Forum on Sunday 12 May at 6:00 pm. The quarterfinals are played as best-of-five series, Game 2 is scheduled for Tuesday at 8:00 pm, same arena. Olimpia enters the game after a week of work before juping on the post-season wheel, with its frenetic pace. In the Italian league, they won the last seven games and ended the second half of the season with a record of 13 wins and 2 losses, a pace good enough for the first place. Among the positive notes: in the Italian league, Olimpia has won the last 10 games played at home and has an overall streak of 13 wins in a row. In 2024, it has an overall record of 24-12, 14-1 at home, the last defeat handed by Red Star, before 13 wins. Again, in 2024, Olimpia is 10-2 between the EuroLeague and the Italian league in games closed with margins of five or less points. All these numbers speak of improvements, which will now have to be validated in the playoffs. The opponent is not the easiest: Trento, faced four times in the playoffs, has been beaten three times during the season but at least two games were very close. It is a solid team, which had the misfortune of losing Andrejs Grazulis during the season (in addition to Mattia Udom and Niang), but will now add Daulton Hommes, a power forward who played in Cremona and did well in the EuroLeague in Vitoria. On top of it, Trento has talented players, who have established themselves during the year such as Prentiss Hubb and Kamar Baldwin, plus the experience of Paul Biligha and Toto Forray. Game 1 is obviously already a key game to set the tone for the series.
COACH ETTORE MESSINA – “We’ll face the series focusing on one game at a time, as we always do. We know that Trento is a very athletic team consistently trying to open up the floor in order to attack with dribble drives and a massive use of three-point shooting. For us, it will be important to play good defense and to control the rebounding battle. At the same time, we’ll try to balance our inside game with our primeter play.”
TRENTO OUTLOOK – Trento closed the regular season fifth for points scored and second for assists dished, so demonstrating the quality of its basketball. It is a team with a lot of depth among the perimeter players especially after the return of Quinn Ellis after the addition of Matt Mooney at mid-season. Basically, Coach Galbiati can rotate five men for the positions and will use a three-guard lineup every now and then, especially when Davide Alviti will slide into the power forward spot, the one deeply plagued by injuries. Prentiss Hubb, Kamar Baldwin and Mooney are all three dangerous three-point shooters. Hubb (11.2 points and 5.1 assists per game) is averaging 6.9 attempts per game on 37.6 percent shooting; Baldwin (13.6 points, 4.3 assists and 4.3 rebounds per game) attempts 5.1 three-pointers per game on 34.0 percent; and finally, Mooney, who is a specialist, averages 5.1 threes per game and is shooting 39.4 percent on them. For him there are 11.0 points and 3.8 assists per game. He is also shooting 58.1 percent on twos. Forray adds 6.4 points per game; Ellis 6.3 points on average. Alviti, rarely included in the starting five, produces 10.9 points per game off the bench with great efficiency (65.8 percent from two, 40.3 percent from three). Biligha, 30 games out of 30 as a starter, averages 10.0 points per game with 3.1 rebounds. Derek Cooke contributes 5.7 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
