MADRID, 15 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Valencia Basket coach, Álex Mumbrú, recalled that this Thursday in the Copa del Rey they will face a Real Madrid that is “very confident” and that it is “made to win all competitions”, so he hopes that his team , also “at a good time”, be able to compete “for all 40 minutes”.
“The Cup is always special, it’s the ‘ko tournament’ in which losing sends you home and that’s why it’s attractive. We know that we’re playing against an opponent who is playing very well, who arrives with a lot of confidence and who is made to win all the competitions he is in. It will be hard,” Mumbrú said this Wednesday at a press conference collected by the club’s website.
The ‘taronja’ coach remarked that Chus Mateo’s team “is playing good basketball” and that they have “a long squad”. “We know of the difficulty, but I think that we are also in a good moment and we will see if we are capable of stopping everything they have, which is a lot, and if we can be competitive during the 40 minutes,” he warned.
For this reason, the Catalan is clear that it is “important” that they are “well defensively in all lines”. “They don’t just have Musa. Hezonja is at a high level, they have Sergio Rodríguez, Llull, Williams-Goss, Tavares, Poirier, Yabusele… They have a very complete team and it’s not just stopping a player, it’s stopping to the team. If in the end Musa gives us 30 points, but we win the game, we wouldn’t care”, he said.
“The important thing is that we stop a bit all their lines and the game they have. They are great and there are times when they put Hezonja in ‘3’ and Musa in ‘2’ and it becomes a team of more than All two meters and that it is difficult to attack because there are few spaces. Let’s see if we are able to compete well against so much physique, which is something that we already do all year in the Euroleague”, remarked Mumbrú.
Regarding the physical state of the squad, he hopes to be able to count on Xabi López-Arostegui, who has been ill in recent days, and he is more pessimistic about power forward James Webb III, with pain in the chondrocostal joint.
“We are trying to get Webb to arrive, but it seems complicated. I don’t want to rule him out, he will travel with us and we will wait until the last moment to see if he can be there or not,” he said.
“López-Arostegui is much better from the knee injury, but he has not trained because he has been sick, quite annoyed. He is fine from the injury, but physically he is unwell due to this illness,” he clarified about the Basque forward.