By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Coach Dimitris Itoudis took over CSKA back in 2014 and he has led them to five straight EuroLeague Final Four appearances including a title in 2016. The squad had some ups and downs this season but they pulled through in no small part thanks to Nando De Colo, who had ups and downs of his own but stepped up when most needed.
Itoudis has always had high praise for De Colo and considers him CSKA‘s leader as he told EuroLeague.net: “Nando is our leader, for sure. I’ve spent a lot of individual hours talking with Nando – on the court, off the court. Each and every player has his moments. Nando also had some ups and downs. But I never doubted his quality of leading the team. This was, as I said, a defining moment that made us all realize what our obligations were and the contributions we needed to have in order to succeed. Nando realized that very well. Not only himself, he pushed others to go through their boundaries and perform extraordinary, perform great to accomplish the second win.”
CSKA will face Real Madrid in the semifinals and although they won against them twice this season, the coach warned that this will be a different game: “Real Madrid, first of all, is a great club, a great organization with a lot of success throughout the years. They are the defending champions, so it’s a team that has everything. They definitely have a certain style of game, offensively and defensively. Tavares is one of their important factors in how they try to build their defense, but not only him. Their guys are doing a great job of helping Tavares spend so much time in the paint defensively, trying to block shots. We try to have good answers against this kind of game. We try to make certain adjustments; I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, as I said, they have quality, they are the defending champions. We have already played twice this season and we were victorious both times, but this is a different game; this is a final, a totally different approach. We will try to be prepared for that.”
Itoudis along with Fenerbahce coach Zeljko Obradovic became the only coaches to reach the Final Four five times in a row: “It’s not about individual accomplishments. I’m proud to be in such a great club, working with such a great group of competitors, great players and great characters and the president and the management and of course the coaches I have with me on the staff. We can always be with the teams that are chasing glory; we are one of the clubs that has the chances to go and get it. I’m proud. I feel blessed. I feel honored to be in such a spot working with such people and every day I am getting better as a person, as an individual. I’m learning more things”, he said.