Virtus, Scariolo: “Many mistakes in the first half”

After the match against Real Madrid, coach Scariolo spoke at the press conference: “I congratulate Real Madrid, they played a great game, excellent, from both sides of the pitch, they were excellent in the area defensively. In the first half we made a lot of mistakes especially for this: we shot very badly from two despite knowing it would be very difficult to shoot from close quarters, especially when Tavares was on the pitch. We came back down in the score but then in the last minutes they had an incredible finish. We fought proudly, with some excellent minutes in the second half that allowed us to go so far as to definitely reopen the game. Then, once again, the class of Real players, Hezonja in particular, decided the match: sometimes we didn’t defend well against him, other times we did, but he showed why he played so many important minutes in the NBA too, he is a top-level player and we have to applaud him. In the second half we showed our real face, in defense and sharing the ball; we were shy at the beginning, with all due respect to Real Madrid. We also had players out but there’s not much to say. Once again congratulations to Real Madrid, a top team, I wish them all the best for the playoffs. Something to reproach? We haven’t listened well to what we said to each other these days about which shots were right to shoot: we shot too much from inside the box and the percentages show our mistakes. When we played the ball outside we were effective. Lack of peace of mind and patience to take an extra step to come up with better solutions was definitely a factor. We could have done better in defense too but we often came back from mistakes and it was difficult to arm our defense against a good team in transition. Our defensive errors come from bad decisions in attack, more by the wingers than by the big men, who then gave Real Madrid good chances.”