Interregional Serie B, Gulliver Derthona's debut on Friday at PalaCamagna: coach Luca Ansaloni's expectations
The wait is over. Since that sweet 8th of June which marked the promotion in Interregional Serie B on September 29th which will mark the debut in the new fourth championship in order of importance at a national level. The youth of the Derthona Basketball they officially begin their season with the U19 Eccellenza group which this year also faces the senior championship, in addition to its youth championship. The desire to witness the debut of the can therefore now be satisfied 20:45 di Friday al PalaCamagna di Tortona of the Gulliver Supermarkets Derthona against Varese Campus on the first day of Group A, the Lombard-Piedmontese one.
Going up in category obviously raises the level of the opponents and from here starts the analysis of the day before the head coach and technical manager of the youth sector, Luca Ansaloni"The higher category we have achieved means that we will have to make an even greater effort in terms of quality to be able to compete, so basically it will be an even more stimulating experience. The primary aim of playing a senior championship is to give the kids an experience of a different type than the one they would have at youth level exclusively with their peers. In this sense, the results take a backseat to the improvement we could have over the course of the season, as happened last season. It could happen, although I hope not, that we will initially lose a series of games in a row like last year, but it is not an aspect on which I would dwell much, what interests me will be the constant growth of our boys".
Among which there are some additions recruited in the summer, Stefano Conte, Andrija Josovic and Tommaso Diodati: "They can give a lot because they are all players on whom we can focus strongly, we have seen qualities in them and we plan to develop their strengths and improve their defects. Obviously they must be tested, because only Conte has already played in a senior championship, but the others have not, their impact among the greats must be verified. Furthermore, Conte is out due to injury, so we need to have patience to see him in action”. From this point of view, our thoughts can only go to Pietro Lisini, who was seriously injured in the U19 Eccellenza friendly match against EA7 Emporio Armani Milano last Friday at the PalaCamagna: "We are and will all be rallying around him so that he has a total recovery after surgery. We expect it stronger than before, I can testify to this directly because I have had serious injuries in my career and I came back stronger than before. What I told the boys in the aftermath of what happened to him is to make sure he finds the strongest and most compact team possible when he returns to the group, we will make sure we work for that and we will create the best conditions for him to be reinserted.”, is the caress that Ansaloni reserves for the class of 2005, a veteran of the Lions' youth team. Which this year at the level of U19 Excellence they will try to qualify for the National Finals which they narrowly missed in 2022/23: “For the National Finals we will try to do our part and manage to get in. Quite strange, complicated and delicate factors always have an influence, it is only discovered later how many teams can access the Finals and our group is a fairly narrow passage, it was so last year and it is so this year too because the level is very high, as demonstrated by the final placings of the last Finals, in which the teams that came out of our group finished among the top. Our debut, for example, is against the absolute favorite of the group, College Basketball Borgomanero, so it's a good start, we will immediately feel the level of the opponents and also our own because friendly matches are not enough to see at what point you really are".
