Chus Mateo: “We will cry and we will stand up” | Basketball | Sports | EUROtoday

He would have preferred to get pleasure from a beer together with his technical group and his household to have fun a Euroleague title, the second in a row. The defeat towards Panathinaikos modified that pleasure for disappointment, however not the plans and the steadiness of the trail of the Madrid coach, Chus Mateo, who assured that he deliberate to toast his group as nicely. “At the end of the day, in life, when I win and when I lose, they are by my side,” he stated. And he gave braveness to a really robust trajectory through the season to succeed in the final step of the Final Four, although it was the Greek group who reached the sky. “Yes, this path has been worth it, I am not going to think that it is not. Now we will cry tonight and we will rise, we will stand. I'd rather have fought until the end. It's the spirit I want for my team. We will show that Madrid's character is to congratulate opponents and continue moving forward,” commented the white coach.

Regarding the keys to the defeat after a second half of the ultimate very totally different from the primary, Mateo pointed extra to the scoreboard than to the character of his gamers. “In the first half we understood what we had to do against their defense, but in the second they improved at the back, they played with more physical strength and we lost our energy. And then we shot too many three-pointers, we left them in control because we didn't play with the same discipline. We should have looked deeper. We lost aggressiveness,” commented the Madrid coach, additionally “confused” by the refereeing and the fouls his inside males had been charged with.

Added to this confusion in Madrid's concepts and the drop in voltage was the rise of Sloukas, who has already added 4 Euroleague titles with three totally different groups: Olympiacos in 2012 and 2013, Fenerbahçe in 2017 and Panathinaikos now.

Sloukas monopolized the limelight that Llull earned final yr. “We had the game to break it and we didn't do it,” lamented the Balearic guard. “They had a higher degree of energy, they were aggressive, intense, effective in the attack. They had the patience to find the best positioned man for the shot. We didn't have that patience in attack, we were very predictable and not very fluid, and they took advantage of it. We knew that the game was going to be long, a marathon. We played a good first quarter, but in the second half it cost us a lot,” Campazzo added.

And from the Euroleague to the basic. On Wednesday (8:30 p.m., Movistar), Madrid hosts Barcelona within the first match of the ACB semifinals, in the very best of 5 matches (Friday additionally on the WiZink and Sunday on the Palau are subsequent) with house benefit for the whites . Madrid will arrive harm after the European defeat. “This has to give us fuel,” Campazzo requested; “We have another title ahead of us and we have to get up.”

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