The EuroLeague is back in Milan: Olimpia is playing host to Zalgiris Kaunas, an historical rivalry dating back to the 80’s (Meneghin, McAdoo and D’Antoni on one side; Sabonis, Homicius, Kurtinaitis on the other), with more acts later in the 90’s. Both teams lost their first game, Zalgiris at home against Baskonia, while Olimpia lost in Munich, then both teams won in their domestic league games.
OLIMPIA – Olimpia worked all week in Milan. Arturas Gudaitis practiced with the team and his return is imminent, but won’t take place on Friday against his former team. Vlado Micov worked with the goal of returning for the Zalgiris game. Nemanja Nedovic and Shelvin Mack won’t be available. Aaron White, who didn’t play in the league game because of his daughter’s birth, is back in the line-up.
COACH ETTORE MESSINA – “We hope to have Micov back for some minutes at least, in order to extend the rotation among perimeter players, while we are waiting for Nedovic and Gudaitis returns. We should get there soon. Having more energy, physically, than Zalgiris is going to be crucial to win the game. At the same time, it’s going to be key moving the ball well to avoid struggling much against their press. Zalgiris is obviously a well coached team, they play with a lot of enthusiasm, while, before our home crowd, we really want to play a very good game”.
ZALGIRIS – Zalgiris lost its first EuroLeague game, at home, against Baskonia. Compared to the last season, it kept the same coach, Sarunas Jasikevicius, and most of the Lithuanian players, adding Martinas Geben, who started at center last week, and the point-guard Lukas Lekavicius, who came back after spending two years at Panathinaikos. More changes were made among the foreigners: Zach LeDay is coming from Olympiacos, while the point-guard Alex Perez and the other two big men, Nigel Hayes and Jock Landale are newcomers in the EuroLeague. Thomas Walkup was kept. Finally, shooting specialist Arturas Milaknis is entering the game on a 16-game streak with at least a three made, and Paulius Jankunas, a Zalgiris legend himself, at 35, is the second all-time best EuroLeague rebounder and fourth scorer.
THE REFEREES –Juan Carlos Garcia (Spain), Mehdi Difallah (France) e Ioannis Foufis (Greece).
MISCELLANEA – Sergio Rodriguez has 378 made threes for his career, three shy of Jaka Lakovic’s 381 for the seventh place all-time. He’s also two steals shy of 200 and is sitting in the fifth place for career assist. Luis Scola is 28th in the all-time rebounding list, with 816. Gregor Fuck is two-rebound away in 27th position. Scola had one three in his career entering this season, but he made two threes in his very first game back. Kaleb Tarczewski is 10 rebounds away from 300 for his career. Vlado Micov has an active streak of seven games with at least one steal.
