The student point guard’s past matches Brandone Francis, as both were Red Riders at Texas Tech University. Roberson scores 15.6 points per game with a stratospheric 53% accuracy from triple. Al Baskonia made six of ten attempts. He has passed 20 points in three games.
“On the third day he rose again,” say the sacred scriptures. If there is any believer in the heart of Acunsa Gipuzkoa Basket, surely they have thought of that phrase after the team’s sporting death during the last quarter against Fuenlabrada last Saturday. There can – and should – be a resurrection option and hope. It would be convenient to look at what happened seven seasons ago when Gipuzkoa Basket received its biggest beating in ACB. One Kings Eve he lost at the Palau by 48 points (98-50) and a week later he managed to beat Valencia.
The Gipuzkoan team has no choice but to visit Estudiantes at the WiZink Center in Madrid tonight (9:15 pm, Movistar Deportes) to show that the last game was an accident. A bad day at the office. “We all have to take a step forward,” declared Marcelo Nicola yesterday before taking the bus to Madrid. The Rafael is aware that defeats like those of Fuenlabrada do a lot of damage, because they collide head-on with what he has been promulgating since he arrived at Gipuzkoa Basket last season: «Fight, not give up a ball for lost and that people feel proud of us».
The players must have gotten the message from their coach. Obviously it is important to win, it would be the best news for the faithful of Gipuzkoa Basket. But Illunbe’s blow was so great that it would even be enough for the team to return to give good feelings. Like those of the first three league games. Nicola assured that “the improvement of the individual players will make us a better team and vice versa.”
The numbers say that the GBC is the team that scores the fewest points (70) and that the worst percentage of two-point shooting has (44%) and the second behind the triple (31%). Which results in that, in addition to an effort in defensive tasks, the GBC must find light in attack. It must recover the lost identity of the first games, where a brave team was seen, who scored 41 points against Madrid in the first half or who came to win by 16 against Burgos.
The dangers of ‘Estu’
Opposite is a team that has had a better start to the campaign than expected. He has won in three games (Fuenlabrada, Gran Canaria and Betis) and has three players who make the difference. Point guard John Roberson, guard Aleksa Avramovic and forward Alessandro Gentile. “They are players who have many points in their hands but we will have to defend everyone, not just those three,” Nicola confirmed. “Estudiantes are playing with confidence and are a very dangerous opponent.”
Roberson and Avramovic average 15 points per game each one and also their shooting percentages are excellent. Gentile does 12.6 and has six rebounds and two assists. Without a doubt, players to watch and very closely, in addition.
Alec Brown, Víctor Arteaga, Cvetkovic and the young Giedraitis, make up the first offensive options for Estudiantes, whom the GBC has defeated eleven times in 22 games. There is no better potion against depression than triumph.
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