Biguá got into the semi-finals of the League and once the match was over, at the door of the dressing room and with Pepo Vidal behind us asking for some pizzas for the entire squad, Total Basketball spoke with Argentine coach Hernán Laginestra.
With the classification in his pocket, the first thing that the Pato coach managed to do was a kind of catharsis as a result of everything that this team had to go through during the championship: “The truth is that we had a lot of vicissitudes, a lot of injuries. The doctors could not cope, remember that on the first date of the tournament we lost Rudd and Vidal for 40 days. After Hatila, Diego Pena was injured, we had many things. We did four full training sessions since the season started, four, nothing more. And the team is still alive, that is the mentality that we have, that is the heart that always takes us forward and the union that there is, that makes us all pull to the same side ”.
When asked if all these drawbacks did nothing more than show how long the Biguá squad is, Laginestra chose to highlight those of his rivals: “We knew that the eight teams that were at this stage were very good. They had good foreigners and good national chips, it was very close. We resolved it clearly in the first game, but we knew that today we were going to have a much greater opposition. We were going to find a team that being on the ropes was going to drop everything, but we were able to match that too and we had a very good finish as a team that allowed us to keep the point ”.
Last night, and especially in the hottest moment of the game, Donald Sims shone again. We asked Laginestra to tell us what it is like to direct such a player and this he replied: “I have been facing Donald for many years in Argentina, I know him well and he has made me bitter for more than one night, that is the reality. We also know his personal gifts and luckily he closed everything to us so that he can come. He has a friendship with Pepo too, because they played together in Argentina. He also liked the club, I spoke very well to him about Biguá and that it was a League in which people did not travel and everything helped so that he is here today. He is a great leader, a great person, very honest, very sensible and a great athlete ”.
Regarding those talks with Sims about the club, prior to the start of the League, we asked the Argentine coach about his feelings once he arrived at the Villa Biarritz club and what he found: “I found a fantastic organization, with leaders who want to take a step forward, wanting to transcend and improve. We are going through a good stage, of team building, since I repeat, we all train very little together, and the boys are only now getting into shape. So I think we will continue to grow, but the club, I found it fantastic, the divine facilities, the very good people and the leaders willing to make an effort to put together a competitive team. They are all very good things that have happened to me since I arrived ”.
The great collective game that Biguá has been showing and the premature elimination of the Aguada contest, catapults Pato as one of the iron candidates for the title, although for Laginestra the number one is another: “It seems to me that the great candidate is Nacional, it is the team that spent the most money. But we have to be calm, develop our game, recover players, keep training and continue with the mentality that we have come up to now. Later we will see how far we can go ”.
Finally and while Pepo was closing the order of pizzas for the entire squad from the locker room door, we asked the Argentine if he would not stay and this he told us: “That is a moment for the players, I will always eat with Pablo Ibón after each game. That is their moment, of the players, it is their space and we also want them to enjoy it alone without our presence ”.
