GRANADA, 18 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The coach of Valencia Basket, Joan Peñarroya, acknowledged that his own “start” in the Copa del Rey quarter-final match against UCAM Murcia (83-86) had “surprised” them, in addition to assuring that the defeat is “a hard stick” after doing “a lot of bad minutes on a day when I didn’t play”.
“I really don’t know what happened to us, that start we’ve had has surprised us all. That the mistake led us to defend so soft is not a logical explanation. We started the game very badly and with a mentality that was not the that today’s meeting needed”, he declared at a press conference.
However, he warned that they should not “seek any kind of excuse” for the result suffered in Granada. “Today we wanted to win and we should have played better to be able to win. We’ll see how the team recovers; now eleven players are going all over the world and we’ll see how they arrive ten days from now”, he pointed out, emphasizing that he hopes that what happened “serve for the future”.
“Surely the team is not going to fall apart. Today we have to have the ability to digest a defeat after playing a lot of bad minutes on a day when we didn’t play,” he added. “We came to the Copa del Rey with the illusion of doing very well, with the awareness that if we played our basketball we could play the last game and win it. Today we didn’t do it, we did it at times. We left with bad feelings. For us it is a hard stick, but we have done many things wrong and in many moments we have not deserved the victory”, he continued.
Regarding the start, which “greatly conditions the rest of the game”, the Catalan coach explained that the mistake made them “enter a state of disappointment”. “We are very late in all our defensive situations and we let Murcia play freely; we are lucky, I would dare to say, to reach the half part with that -19”, he confessed.
Already in the second half, they have improved their performance to get closer to the Murcian team. “We have come out with energy, we have been able to run, we have dominated the rebound and we have had all the success that we have lacked throughout the game. I would not say that this is our team, but surely what we want is more similar to that than to what we have seen in the first 20 minutes,” he said.
“Then we have several moments to break the match in our favor and something always happens to us: some absurd loss, some missed shot, many free throws that we missed in important moments… And the end was a heads or tails in which it was our turn We leave with very bad feelings for that first part that greatly conditions the rest of the game”, he continued, highlighting that “the merit of Thad McFadden” or “the triple of Webb” definitively punished them.
On the other hand, he affirmed that Macedonian point guard Neno Dimitrijevic had “moments of brilliance in the offensive matter”, but stressed that they also needed to “be solid at the back”, before speaking of Cuban power forward Jasiel Rivero. “Jasiel has been good if you look at the statistics, but there are situations where you have to be better,” he stressed.
“Back, he has been confused a couple of times with Webb, and one at the end that in high competition must be avoided. Jasiel’s energy gives us a lot, but we are not going to stay only with the numbers, but with that level of demand that has to take him to be a player of another level, which he is not yet. We are happy with his work,” he concluded.