MADRID, Sep. 12 (.) –
The Spanish basketball coach, Sergio Scariolo, has assured that Tuesday’s “demanding” Eurobasket quarter-final match against Finland has been “particularly complicated” to prepare for, and he hopes that they will be “mentally up to the task” against a team that “it drives you crazy, makes you dizzy and ends up scoring a triple at the end of possession after running like a headless chicken”.
“It was especially difficult to prepare for the game this time, a very difficult game on a tactical level, playing a rival who plays in an original, atypical, very effective way, with five players on the perimeter, with a world-class star like Markkanen and other excellent shooters. It is the team that shoots the most from three, that runs the most in transition… The task for the players on the court is going to be very demanding,” he said in statements to the media.
In this sense, the Italian coach warned of the danger of being careless for a moment against the Nordic team. “I am counting on us to have the maximum respect and the maximum hardness of impact, because it is a team that, if you let it play, drives you crazy, it can make you dizzy and ends up scoring a triple at the end of possession after having run like a headless chicken for 23 seconds. We have been warned,” he declared.
“Offensively we also have to be capable of playing our game, looking for our advantage, grabbing the rebound… Of course, when you reach the quarter-finals you know that the team that has shown up with the results it has achieved and with its A way of playing that has a very high level of play and efficiency is one of the difficult ones. We will see if we are mentally capable of living up to what a Eurobasket quarter-final requires of us”, he concluded.
