Week 2 continues with a 6-games portion
The Alpe Adria Cup regular season continues at a fast pace, Week 2 brings a 6-games portion and opening matches for a quartet of teams. Read our preview ahead of Wednesday.
Pardubice and Oberwart will play for the second win in Group A. Both teams succeeded at the beginning on the outdoor courts, now they can help each other again in the fight for promotion. “They play very fast and shoot well. They are showing their quality in the Austrian league, where they are 3-0 after three games, two of them away. They also won the opening game of the Alpe Adria Cup against Dabrowa Górnicza, which is a very good Polish team. We need to continue our concentration in attack and the same good defensive performance we showed against Nymburk. I hope that we will build on it, that we will confirm the good form we have been showing in the last few games. We will try to play a wider rotation because we have a very important game on Saturday. We need to have good energy and play good defense for the whole 40 minutes,” Pardubice coach Dino Repeša said before the game.
Olomoucko will make its debut in Group B. In their first game in AAC, their opponent is the last season’s Final Four participant, Austria’s Vienna. “We take the competition as an opportunity to move the club and the players up. Confrontation with European basketball is optimal from this point of view. But we don’t just want to participate, we want to make it through the opening group game. We will come up against a quality team that is in good shape. They showed that in the first game, where they won the last quarter by 20 points,” revealed the president and coach of Olomoucko Michal Pekárek.
Vienna kicked off their AAC campaign in triumphant fashion with a success against Šibenka in Croatia. Now it would like to add a home win to that. “Our next opponents already had some difficulties at the beginning of the season – they already lost 4 games, already went through a coaching change and will almost certainly do everything to get the first win of the season. For us, the game is very important – it’s our home arena and we want to secure our place in the group as early as possible and also prepare for all further games,“ evaluated the nearest opponent Vienna coach Aramis Naglić.
Šibenka travels to Ilirija, which enters this edition of the AAC on Wednesday. The Croatian team would like to spoil that debut with success in Slovenia. “Ilirija is a young and compact team full of Slovenian players and its programme is based on the development of these players. The arrival of experienced players makes them favourites in home games. They have started the league 1-2, they expect success in this match. We go into every game with the goal of winning. For me, the most important thing is that every next game we push on. We want to play a quality and competitive game and try to get our first win in the Alpe Adria Cup,” said Šibenka coach Damir Milačić.
Let’s take a look at the C-group, where Komárno will finally join the competition. “For the first time we are part of the Alpe Adria Cup and from the at least 6 games that await us, I expect us to represent the club and the city of Komárno, to which we want to show that basketball has returned here. We wanted to give our fans and players the opportunity to play in a European competition,” said Komárno coach Zlatko Jovanović.
AAC Regular season Week 2 schedule:
Group A
17.30 h: BK KVIS Pardubice – UNGER STEEL Oberwart Gunners
18.00 h: MBK Dabrowa Górnicza – KK Furnir
Group B
19.00 h: BC GGMT Vienna – BC REDSTONE Olomoucko
19.00 h: Nutrisport Ilirija – GKK Šibenka
Group C
18.00 h: KK DepoLink Škrljevo – BC GEOSAN Kolín
19.00 h: Kapfenberg Bulls – BC Komárno