Bertram wants to continue the golden moment: in Casale there is the direct clash with Reggio Emilia. The words of coach De Raffaele
With a streak of 4 significant victories between the league and the Champions League and a climb to sixth place in the standings, in tomorrow's match at 17:30 against UNAHOTELS Reggio Emilia, Bertram Derthona Tortona is looking for other reasons to look optimistically at the second half of the season, which has just started with a bang with a blitz on the pitch of the former lone leader Brescia. For the black and white team, it is the first home match of the final half of the regular season of the Serie A Unipol, which opens its 17th matchday at the PalaEnergica Paolo Ferraris in Casale Monferrato.
DIRECT CLASH Tortona-Reggio is a direct clash in the playoff zone and the goal for the black and white Lions is to further distance their opponents in the standings, who have dropped to eighth place, 2 points behind Severini and his teammates (20 against 18) thanks to the four consecutive defeats in the championship they are coming off, all of which came against top-ranked teams such as Trapani, Virtus Bologna, Milano and Trieste. If necessary, they can also keep an eye on the basket difference, trying to overturn the -4 of the first leg, the 86-82 suffered in the sprint at the PalaBigi just over two months ago. Compared to that challenge, the guests coached by Dimitris Priftis present among the foreigners the great novelty Kenneth Faried, the veteran American power forward with about ten important seasons in the NBA, almost all with the Denver Nuggets, who arrived in the Reggio roster at the end of November.
TOUR OF FORCE Reggio Emilia brings to mind the Champions League. The Casale challenge is in fact a “derby” between the teams that for the first time since 2021/22 have brought two Italian teams back into the BCL Top 16, which for the Tortona team will start on Tuesday with the German away match against FIT/One Würzburg for the first day of Group I. With Reggio and Würzburg, Derthona inaugurates 5 matches in 16 days between the two national and European competitions before the Final Eight of the Italian Cup, the same fate that awaits UNAHOTELS, which from Casale will then take flight towards Tenerife to face the Spanish team on Tuesday in its debut in the second group stage.
MATCH SPONSORS Allianz will be the match sponsor of the game against Reggio Emilia. The insurance company, Exclusive Sponsor of the men's and women's teams of the black and white club and Title Sponsor of the youth sector, will offer a piece of Derthona merchandising to the winners of the DB Game at half time.
STATEMENTS "With Reggio Emilia it will be a very physical challenge, they can field very large quintets, with a lot of stamina. Both the physical impact and the ability to limit high-quality players like their wingers, who hurt us so much in the first leg, will be equally important", is the coach's analysis of the eve Walter De Raffaele. "So the focus must be on a team game that is certainly of a high level on their part and this is an important element to keep in mind. It is true that Reggio comes from a series of defeats in the championship but also from a beautiful qualification to the Top 16 of the Champions League, for which we congratulate them. And then those defeats came against important teams, in Trapani, with Bologna, in Milan, where they also came within a shot of victory, and the last home one with Trieste also due, I believe, to what they had spent in terms of energy in the midweek Champions League match that we know well how much energy it takes away. It remains a team that is having a great season. We – continues taking stock of the physical situation of his team – we tried to recover a bit more this week because it is the last one before many double commitments championship-Champions followed by the Final Eight of the Italian Cup. All this net of some physiological ailments, but in this aspect there is a lot of integration, empathy and trust in the work of our medical staff".
