Andrea MAZZON
Avtodor head coach:
“It was very good & intense game in our preparation process. We have a chance to win but we missed a couple of important threes in the last quarter. From the other side, Drake & Travis Dieners brought this win for Vanoli Cremona. Travis is a superstar winning the Italian championship and has many years of NBA experience. That will be also a good lesson for our players as when you are playing against an NBA player you have to be fully concentrated throughout the whole 40 minutes. This is very important.

However, overall it was really serious game and we played well. Unfortunately, the game was officiated by two very young referees. They allowed very hard level of contacts. Thus, Klimenko was hit in his eye with the elbow in the second quarter. That was another essential lesson for us to play like this against a team that put such physical effort.

We have made a really strong improvement. I am very proud of our Russian players because they got a valuable experience, also they are getting better from game to game. Zabelin, Klimenko, Zibirov, Kliuchnikov and of course Sheleketo are getting better as a team and helping some rookies like Robinson and others. We are doing a good process. On Friday we are going to play against Umana Reyer Venezia, the best Italian team. We will try to fix the last things in order to be ready as much as possible to Keravnos. That is our really target. Therefore, we will primarily try to save the players in the last two friendly games as we are waiting the most crucial games against Keravnos already next week.”