Orhun Ene, Head Coach of our Men’s National Team, which will compete in the FIBA Men’s Olympic Qualifications between 29 June – 4 July 2021, “Starting from the last week of May, we started a preparation period. During this preparation period, we wanted to include our national team in the squad by choosing players from a wider range, both in the group matches we will play in the Olympic Qualifications and in the matches we will play during the season, with the window starting in November. We started our preparations with about 20 people. We have been working with a large staff for a long time, with the participation of players who played in the finals of the ING Basketball Super League and whose season ended in the NBA. Shane Larkin, who was injured in the last game of the league finals in the league with Furkan Korkmaz and Ersan İlyasova, is currently unable to train with us. But other players continued their training at a brisk pace during this period. We are going to a difficult group. The two groups that we will play in the Olympic Qualifications then merge. But we aim to win the semi-finals and final matches and qualify for the Olympic Games. There are powerful countries such as Czechia, Greece and Canada. Until then, we have to be ready both physically and technically. We had reached a certain level in the last two windows we played in our country. Together with our new friends Cedi Osman and Ömer Faruk Yurtseven, our staff got a little deeper. Together with these players, we want to be a better team by placing above the last two tournaments. Hopefully, we will become a stronger team together with our two players from the NBA and Shane Larkin, without any disruptions in this process.” said.
Evaluating the preparation matches of our Men’s National Team, which will face Venezuela on Thursday, June 17 and Russia on Saturday, June 19 at Istanbul Sinan Erdem Sports Hall, Orhun Ene said, “We want to consider the period when the players playing in the club teams stay away from the national team and ensure their adaptation to the national team. From last year’s window matches, we had a set up with both technique and the habit of playing together. We want to improve this order even more in these two games we will play here. It is no longer possible to make long-term camps in national teams. Because the challenging schedule created by the players’ in-season European and local league matches negatively affects the preparation of the national teams. We will deepen our team chemistry by adding Cedi and Ömer Faruk to this roster in the matches we will play against Venezuela and Russia, our first preparation matches before the Olympic Qualifications.” he said.
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