By Stefan Acevski/ info@eurohoops.net
Badalona will host the Final Four of the Basketball Champions League from May 7th to 9th.
Competing for the trophy in Spain will be the local teams Unicaja and Tenerife, Greek team AEK, and Lithuanian team Rytas, which has reached the BCL Final Four for the first time.
Before the tournament and the semifinal match against Tenerife (Thursday, 18:00 CET), Rytas coach Giedrius Žibenas made a statement.
“It’s a historical achievement for us and the club, and we are really happy about that. It’s a great achievement for Lithuanian basketball also, to play among these teams, who are consistently here is a big honour, we understand that we have a freshman status, but we will try to prove that we belong here as well.”
He also answered questions in Lithuanian. Journalists were curious about the comparison with the rival playmaker Marcelinho Huertas’s age. He briefly replied in English and translated for everyone present, but later jokingly noted that he was talking about tactics in Lithuanian and would not translate that.
“We are the same age. My players are much more younger. I told them a lot of things about tactics, so I will not translate that.”
Captain Gudaitis also made a statement
Before the start of the tournament Arturas Gudaitis, the center and captain of the Lithuanian team, spoke out. He emphasized that playing basketball is never a problem.
“You mentioned as a problem. It’s not a problem, it’s a basketball game, we have to win one game, anything can happen. We understand against who we are playing and we will try to do our best.”
In conclusion, he added that the team is currently well, although they had issues in recent days.
“We have something like nasty, don’t want to try to explain to you. Now we are good, we practiced together, and it looks like we are all OK. We will see tomorrow.”