Heavy ko for the Sassari in the decisive match for qualification
Dinamo are eliminated from the Champions League, and this is not even the worst news: going from the best performance of the year to the most unwatchable one, in the space of just three days, for a team trying to get out of a deep crisis represents instead the yet another step backwards for a group once again at the mercy of events and opponents. The great effort on Sunday paid dearly, but once again the problem was the attitude.
Like a punching bag. In the penultimate match of the group stage, the one that could have decreed the relaunch of the qualification ambitions, the Sassari of Piero Bucchi are swept away by the Ukrainians of Prometey, direct competitor for the third place that in Sassari had won by 8. On the parquet of the Yunost of Zaporizhzhia, five hours drive south of Kiev, Dinamo cue once again in a sensational way, proposing 35 minutes of basketball, attitude and painful faces: it ends with a historic scoppola, 89-56, with Harrison, Bilan and comrades who enjoy playing the slap of the soldier, and with one certainty: instead of being on the right path, after the change of coach and play, Banco must once again rebuild everything from scratch.
Never in the game. On Sunday the biancoblù had made a great impression in the presence of the Italian champions of Virtus Bologna; yesterday afternoon in Ukraine their match lasted just 5 minutes. Without Gentile, who remained in Sassari, and with Battle inside thanks to the competition regulations, Banco di Sardegna remained in the game for less than 5 minutes (16-13), but since the duo they had shown incredible amnesia on a defensive level. Humiliated to rebound (at the end 44-26), literally sliced in the area and rendered totally harmless in the offensive phase (the final 17/53 shooting is forbidden to minors), the biancoblù group melted at the first difficulties. Just like in the worst phases of Cavina management.
Flat encephalogram. Prometey, who had scored 13 points in the first 3’20 “, left with two tugs already in the first quarter: the first from 9-1, the second from 11-2. We are only at 10 ‘and the scoreboard already says 27-15. Chessa and Devecchi, protagonists in Bologna, do not enter the rotations, while the entry of Logan, Diop and Battle, and then of Treier, does not produce any effect. Just over halfway through the second quarter, at 39-21, the result and the European destiny of the Sassari seem to have already been written. Battle strikes a shot but it is a flash in the pan, Bucchi continues to change men but cannot find the key to limit the hosts. The flash in the pan at the end of the period (from 44-23 to 45-32) runs out in an instant. The time of rest and the basket of -11 by Bendzius, on the return to the field, then the comeback air is swept away by the Ukrainians. The defense starts to make water again, errors arrive in the series and Prometey makes the void, placing a break of 14-0 that plunges the Sassari to -25, 59-34. There are still 15 minutes to play, Dinamo do not react and in addition the Ukrainians never take their foot off the accelerator. Perhaps the group is also starting to think about Venice, the fact is that at the third siren the Dinamo is in apnea, 65-41. The situation becomes more and more difficult and the gap between the two teams continues to widen: Evans, all alone in the biancoblù area, signs the point of 77-47; also comes -35 (87-52) and even garbage time is a huge pain. A memorable lesson emerges (89-56) – not the first of this bad European campaign – in the context of a season that is getting more and more uphill.