After a fearsome rival as CB Coruña was and was, CB Zamora will face in this very tight end of the year, with almost no time to recover, another of the League's greats, an Obradoiro who, as had already happened last year, is going from less to more and is once again a clear candidate for promotion.
Saulo Hernández's team once again has a lot to gain and very little to lose this Tuesday at the Fontes do Sar pavilion where it will be very difficult to win, but it does not give up anything. The Zamora coach, who highlighted the work of his men despite the defeat against Coruña, believes that the Obradoiro field is one of the most complicated in the category, “not only because of the level of the squad and more so with the recent additions of and Kravics, who was already among the favorites, has become a super squad with twelve top-level players available in addition to a great coach”, in addition CB Zamora will travel with just three days of rest after playing a very demanding against Coruña, “while they rested last week and have had ten days of preparation and have won eight games in a row so they are in very good momentum.”
Given this situation, Saulo Hernández Bris believes that his team must approach the game “with the same predisposition as the game against Coruña, knowing that they have many strong points, that there is practically nothing you can hold onto to find weaknesses in them, but if we are capable of playing each possession as if it were the last, and putting all our will and energy on the court, we will have opportunities to compete in the game and that is how we will face it,” said the Zamorano coach in statements made to the Club.
Indeed, Obradoiro – relegated last season from the ACB League – occupies third position, two wins behind the leader who continues to be Coruña, tied with Estudiantes. The Santiago team led by Diego Epifanio, who arrived this season after preparing for ACB in Coruña, did not start the campaign well and lost two games that they should not have lost under normal conditions in Menorca (97-77) and against Cantabria (82-87), but since then they have not finished lower on the scoreboard again and are now a serious rival to challenge Leyma Coruña and Movistar Estudiantes for first place, who are now their direct rivals.
The Monbus Obradoiro rest week ends to enter a new phase of maximum demand. The team led by Diego Epifanio is preparing to receive Caja Rural CB Zamora this Tuesday and visit the bottom of the category, Palmer Basket Mallorca Palma, on Sunday. Diego Epifanio has had enough time to prepare for the first of these duels and polish his team in general matters to prepare his way to assault the leadership. The coach, accompanied by sports director Héctor Galán, witnessed live the match that CB Zamora played against CB Coruña on Saturday. This double match week precedes the date marked in red for Galician basketball: the derby in Sar against Leyma Coruña, leader of the First FEB. Obra wants to go into the clash with the Herculinos strong, morally, in results and in its game. Of course, along the way you should not be thinking about A Coruña and all your focus should be on Zamora and, immediately afterwards, on Palmer Basket.
The reality is that the Compostela team came from the FIBA window break beating Flexicar Fuenlabra (97-69), but without leaving a good taste in the mouth. It was difficult for him to start against a rival who came with few first team players and no options. The Compostela team were able to break the clash earlier by having offered their best version, so this second break will have served to reassure them that, to win, we have to do things better.
The city of the Apostle believes that “Zamora will be an ideal test to show off its capabilities against a demanding rival that is being one of the teams that has surprised the most at this start of the competition. In fact, they were able to put fear into Leyma Coruña this Saturday, coming back after the break to get within one point after the third quarter, although their push against the leader lasted until then,” the newspaper La Opinión de Coruña reported yesterday.
Despite the defeat, CB Zamora has once again shown that it is capable of competing with anyone and reappearing in matches. Obradoiro will have no room for relaxation or doubt, forced to show that it is one of the teams called to fight for promotion with an example of a solid team on both sides of the court.
The people of Compostela can breathe a little with respect to the pressure of those who come from behind, since the stumble of Súper Agropal Palencia in their fiefdom (64-76) against Inveready Gipuzkoa puts the Castilians with two more defeats than those of the Galician capital. HLA Alicante also lost by the minimum with Alimerka Oviedo, CB Zamora's next rival next Sunday at 12:30 p.m. at the Ángel Nieto.
Diego Epifanio, coach of Monbus Obradoiro, warned this Monday of the danger of Caja Rural Zamora. “They are a team that has a lot of speed, they are second in three-point shooting percentage in the competition with 40 percent, they always try to punish the first seconds and then I think they prepare the games very well. They know what they want to play with each rival, they know where the weak points or attackable points of the rivals are and that's where they put the focus. Zamora is going to demand a lot from us,” he warned. Epi praised the work that Saulo Hernández is doing in the Zamorano team, a “very dangerous” block on a defensive level and lethal in transitions because “their big guys also run a lot.” Epifanio, however, admitted that the possible loss of point guard Ty Roberts would be good news for Obradoiro because the Californian is one of the main offensive weapons of his next rival. “We don't know if Roberts will be able to play or not, but he is a player who is not in the statistics because he has only been able to play three games and the results of five games are included in the statistics. Until now he has scored 22 points on average in the three games he was in,” he recalled.
The Breoganista coach also pointed to Zamora's two “generating” point guards because, in his opinion, they are making his team play “very well”, in addition to having the “ability to score in different ways.” “Peris is playing at a great offensive level, and Rogers is a player who is getting a lot of performance out of him,” he said. n
