Basketball, Champions League: Reggio ok, Sassari flop

Francesco Pioppi-Nicola Casconi

October 5th
– Milano

BONN-REGGIO EMILIA 84-88
Reggio Emilia’s Champions League adventure begins in the best possible way. Coach Menetti’s team, victorious in the first championship against Treviso, repeats itself on the European stage and makes the blitz in Bonn playing at very high rates and showing flashes of high-level basketball. The tests of the all-Italian duo formed by Cinciarini (10 points and 10 assists) and Michele Vitali, author of 17 points in the final break that laid the Germans, were decisive. Good performances also by Robertson (19 pts) and Reuvers (14 points and 4 blocks) who confirms himself as a prominent intimidator just like in the championship, where he leads the special classification. Now the Emilians will take the field again on Sunday at 5.35pm against Tortona for the second day of Serie A: a “historic” moment for the whole environment because Reggiana Basketball will return to PalaBigi after almost three years of forced “exile” at the Unipol Arena of Bologna, the time it took to complete the tiring restyling of the plant.
Bonn: Shorts 26, Delany e Morgan 11. Reggio Emilia: Robertson 19, Vitali 17, Reuvers 14

SASSARI-MALAGA 76-87
The heat of PalaSerradimigni is not enough to push Sassari i to victory in their seasonal debut in the Champions League. Bucchi’s team in the fourth race in eight days with reduced rotations, surrenders in Malaga paying for the physical and mental fatigue in the last quarter. Sassari gets off to a better start and finds a duel in his favor in the Robinson match against Perry, the Dinamo playmaker burns his direct opponent on the first step several times, so much so as to drag the hosts even 15 points ahead. Malaga responds as a team, the Spanish bench is full of solutions; Kravish dominates under the basket, Diaz opens a defensive turn on the little ones that puts Dinamo out of rhythm, while thanks to the long-range percentages, Malaga first closes the gap, then extends up to 41-47 of the 20 ‘. After the long break, the difference in depth of the two rosters allows Malaga to extend further, Diaz and Kalinovski sign the +10 in the middle of the last quarter while Sassari seems to be on the ropes from a physical and mental point of view. Onuaku and Bendzius try to scrape the bottom of the barrel, but the visiting team remains lucid in managing the pace and finds with Carter the new double-digit advantage that effectively closes the race. Sassari: Onuaku 20, Bendzius 18, Robinson 14
Malaga: Kravish 19, Kalinoski, Osetkowski 17