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| photo: 15min.lt |
Two classic Eurocup teams meets again on Wednesday on season opener.
The hosts. Lietuvos Rytas starting from the bottom. Capital team’s fans could hardly remember of good basketball taste back in the Siemens arena. The last averagely least poor season was back in 2014/15. Since then Rytas was having a nightmare both in Eurocup and Lithuania basketball leagues. Loosing 3 out of 4 semi-finals in past years (as till 2015 they haven’t lost any single one) was a quite big deal, so last season the capital’s people even stopped attending to the games.
The pre-season. After another terrible season club president Gedvydas Vainauskas whose rasist thoughts spread out the world fired himself and gave his belly fruit to entrepreneur Antanas Guoga. The ‘philanthropist’ Guoga lightningly fast dedicated sports director seat to noble basketball player Linas Kleiza. There were talks that he also made some colaborations with Jonas Valanciunas and Arvydas Macijauskas on supporting the old club of Vilnius as the reputation was gone with the wind.
The past&future. Well everyone‘s is very optimistic about this years squad and team governance. There could be much said on topic: how much influence to the team results is goint to give this years squad compared to last. Previous season Tomas Pacesas gathered the group by himself and approved a miserable manager/team builder and coaching skills. Gailius and Kisielius was a disaster, Logan left, Akagon came and left so did the Broadus and so much more, then Pacesas was fired and Kurtinaitis had to step in former coach shoes and make an implement changes on the vegetating group of individuals that had nothing in common with his playbook. Despite of that he approved being a good coach and won a bronze with only Jimmy Baron and poor Lithuanians as the gheto of Hannah, Fisher and Brown was suspended and Gordon was injured.
New beggining. Kurtinaitis had some influence on building squad and added strecth four/five fellas Robert Carter, Travis Peterson and Loukas Mavrokefalidis at the backcourt including modern center in the paint Lithuania prospect shining star Echodas. At frontcourt we have laidback cool personalities newcomers Ben Madgen, Chris Kramer and Mindaugas old wolf Lukauskis. Only few players stayed: Jomantas, Normantas, Baron, Giedraitis. There‘s also Marc Carter but he might be counting last days as he cant take over the 2nd pointguard role which he‘s not.
The importance. Kurtinaitis took-off the practise intensity after upset vs. Lietkabelis and since then Rytas curve was rising. We already seen different team vs. Žalgiris in that hell of a battle. As a completely new team Rytas is building confidence in themselves and so in the fans who start to believe and in return that‘s gonna cost Bilbao team a full-house today.
The visitors. Bilbao is a mixture of experienced veterans and young rookies. For an old body it takes time to recover after long summer so we shouldn’t see real leader Mumbru for a while. Bilbao during off-season lost another 3 musketeers: Ivan Buva, Scott Bamforth and Eric Michael. New singings aren’t really the same level so during the start of the season team is being cared on longtime average players Tabu and rising star Todorovic shoulders. What’s more that it’s a perfect time to lose for Bilbao from sports betting point of view. They just come after a win against the most unprepared for the season team Real Betis that’s going to get stronger, but only with a time. Bilbao also had a decent lose game in-front of home walls vs. terrible shape Real and didn’t have any chances vs. Fuenlabrada in 1st round. Their preparation was long but not impressive at all.
It’s now or never. The best time to give it a fresh start vs. opponent who didn’t surprise and couldn’t as they have weaker squad than last year, didn’t show anything during pre-season and season start, while only been hitting three-pointers with a terrific shooting percent that has to stop soon.
Alternative option: Bilbao under 80 @ Pinnacle (coach Kurtinaitis informed he’s gonna play long positional offensive attacks as otherwise they can’t stop Bilbao. Positional offence would change completely the tempo of game so 164.5 is insane for an old-school basketball game.)
THE Pick: FT(OT incl.) Home -4.50 (AH) @ 1.870 5/10 SBOBET (by: surrealite)
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