Michael Koch himself has had an impressive career as a player and coach. The managing director and sports director of the Gießen 46ers does not want to overestimate the three defeats of his team at the BBL Cup tournament. The games were part of the preparation for the season.
In the interview, Michael Koch makes it clear that the Gießen 46ers will play in the Bundesliga opener home game against Central German BC in two weeks.
Your team lost all three games at the BBL Cup tournament in Vechta. What is your conclusion?
To be fair, I have to say that our preparation is still ongoing and that we started late in it. We also said that the cup tournament is part of the preparation for us. The games against the BBL teams helped us. What I wanted to see, that the team improve from game to game and work on themselves, you could clearly see.
Where are there still construction sites in the team?
I am jointly responsible for the composition of the team, not the style of play. You can see that the team chemistry is fine. When on the last day of the match, even if everyone else says that this game against Göttingen was no longer about nothing, you defend yourself with eight men in the manner shown and have a great chance of winning the game, you realize that the Crew is intact. This reaction, which the team showed on Sunday evening from 8.30 p.m., is extremely important to me.
The three days at the weekend in Vechta were good for the team in terms of the often cited team spirit. The planned training camp was canceled.
We would have liked to have done that, but for various reasons it couldn’t happen. I think so when you are together on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and sometimes away from the families, sometimes you see something else, that it helps the team to get to know each other better. It was also clearly seen that some players developed over the course of the tournament.
I think of Brandon Bowman, for example, who indicates his true potential with better physical fitness.
Due to the corona crisis, we have extremely different levels of fitness. Some players have come here with a level of fitness that isn’t normal when you can do anything in the summer. One or the other player needed exactly the preparation to get into typical basketball fitness. Now we have two more weeks to move that forward. But it’s not just us who have the problem, other BBL teams too.
Are there any problems in the environment and in the structure? For example, the Rivers Hall is not available to you.
We have to adapt. It would be the wrong way to knock on the table and say that everything has to change here. It is a situation now where we must all be humble and considerate. The second corona wave is approaching us. We received a lot of solidarity from sponsors. And the fact that we can train in the hall in Krofdorf does not limit us in such a way that we have to say: We have a training company that is not worthy of the first division. We can use the Krofdorfer Halle every morning and have the east hall in the afternoon. The training situation is no worse than before.
Can the club cope financially with the season under the special conditions caused by Corona?
80 percent of the league will only be able to cope with the season under certain conditions. This is due to the situation. You don’t have a minimum budget anymore, but there are two relegated teams: That means you have to be good enough athletically to keep the league. Economically, it has a lot to do with audience presence. And if that goes away, many clubs will have major financial problems.
How do you feel about the season?
You can lose a few games in preparation. That’s not bad. That also motivates players. It is not meaningful how the preparation goes. The whole league is a big surprise. Many clubs have changed a lot. You have to start the season positively. There is no point in burying your head in the sand because of the defeats in the cup. Our bread and butter games are coming. Those are the most important – and one of them is against the MBC on November 7th. We can only survive as a team. We don’t have a single artist who gives us 25 points every game. And if you look at the league’s budgets, we are very, very far below. To compensate for that, we try to do the whole thing as a team.
