Olimpia Milano is levaving for Madrid. Game 23 between those two teams bringing on the court 56 national titles, 11 European titles and 4 Intercontinental Cups. Real has a 13-9 advantage all-time against EA7 Emporio Armani and is riding a 4-game winning streak. The only Olimpia’s win in Madrid came in the Uleb Cup. Angelo Gigli and Kristjan Kangur are not with the team. Alessandro Gentile is still nursing an hip injury bothering him for amore than a week now and Keith Langford came back from Caserta with a left ankle injury and was unable to practice. Both are traveling with the team.
Coach Luca Banchi: “The schedule is sending us to Madrid for a fascinating game which remind everybody about the great Real Madrid-Olimpia rivalry of the past. Right now we are at two very different stages of our histories. We changed a lot in the summer, they basically didn’t change anything. After winning almost everything last year they kept the same roster and the same coach and that led to a fantastic start of the season. They’re still unbeaten both in the Spanish League and in the Euroleague where they also have the second most prolific offense. They have a lot of talent and are great in open court so it’s going to be important to control the pace and to limit mistakes. Their defense, very aggressive and pressing, is able to generate steals and fastbreak opportunities difficult to contain. That’s why we need to be careful. We are approaching this game with some missing players and some more injuries but at the same time there’s a great desire inside the team to measure ourselves against the best to understand where we are at and what we need to do the aspire to the excellence”.
CJ Wallace: “I have played a lot of games in my life against Real Madrid, I know them, they’re one of the best three-four teams in the Euroleague right now. What we need to do is to control the tempo because if you don’t do that in Madrid you can go down by 20 in a matter of four minutes because of Carroll threes or Llull fastbreaks. So that’s important, nobody is unbeatable but obviously Real Madrid is very, very good”.
