Egonu, frightening efficiency: 58%. Wolosz, top distribution: 43% to the crushers, 32% to the opposite and 22% to the power plants
/ CONEGLIANO
Waiting for the next market announcements, with few news and many very important confirmations at Imoco, it is possible to review with a cold mind what the team and the individual athletes have done in the 46 races played between September and May. The Panthers have faced sixteen opponents between Champions and Italian tournaments and were largely the best in the attack percentage col 51,7%; the only ones able to get close to this quota were, as indeed demonstrated by the direct challenge, the girls of Vakifbank, who closed the season with 48%. All the others are far behind: Novara 43, Chieri 42, Monza, Scandicci and Fenerbahçe 41, Busto 40, Florence, Cuneo and Casalmaggiore 38, Bergamo, Brescia and Perugia 37, Nantes 36, Trentino 35 and Kamnik 32. The peaks the higher were the matches against Florence in January (61%), against Casalmaggiore in September (59%), equaled by the double scudetto semifinal with Scandicci. The lowest points, it goes without saying, coincided with the races with the most uncertain outcome: 39% in the strenuous 3-2 of the quarter-finals of the Champions a Scandicci, 43% three days later in the hard-fought 3-1 match against Chieri and in the never-ending match 1 of the final against Novara, 45% in the semi-final of the Italian Cup with Monza and in the Champions League final with Vakifbank.
As the players themselves noted, the first to realize it, and as we actually saw in the race, the final part of the season marked a slowdown: the last fifteen games from the quarter-finals of the Champions onwards recorded an average attack just over 49%, more than enough in the regular season, but risky in the crucial phases.
The direct errors, a ranking in which Conegliano is, somewhat surprisingly, the worst: 2,7 per set, just ahead of Bergamo and Fenerbahçe, while the best (Vakifbank and Casalmaggiore) scored an average of 1.9. There is no competition, however, in the list of attacks blocked by a wall-point: just one per set for the panthers, almost double for Vakif, second and very far behind, while Nantes, last, reached 3.
Individually, the performance of the Egonu, which was 33 top scorer times out of 41 games played: 47, 42, 41, 38, 37, 35 are his season tops, distributed between the Scudetto final, the Italian Cup, the quarterfinals and the Champions League final. But there are also six other players who have been top scorers at least once: Gicquel (4, top 23 points twice), De Kruijf (2, top 18), Omoruyi (1, 20), Adams (3, 18 ), Sylla (1, 20), Fahr (3, 15). The choral nature of Conegliano’s game emerges from this, recalling, once again, that the distribution of attacks is composed as follows: 43% to one of the crushers, 32% all’opposite to, 22% to one of the central.
The real difference is the percentages of efficiency individual: it goes from 58% of Egonu (which had a peak of 83%) to 40% of Hill, an apparently modest share, but still unattainable for many athletes in the championship. There is still room for improvement, it is true. And from autumn it will be fun. –