A piece of Piedmontese basketball history is being written this night. But Turin (with Reale Mutua) is not the protagonist, but Tortona, with Derthona Basket sponsored by Bertram. The team led by Marco Ramondino accomplishes what is perhaps the feat of the playoffs, beating the much more popular Piedmontese team with the final score of 74-75 at the end of a series that is hard to define on, with the home factor skipped and then taken up by the men of Demis Cavina in race-3. And to say that the latter had also lost Game-4 by only one point, before the incredible night of the PalaRuffini with 20 points by Bruno Mascolo and a completely point-to-point final in which it was decisive Alessandro Cappelletti’s foul on Jamarr Sanders on 74-74; at that point 1/2 with a second free wrong with 4 seconds left, time running out and the game over.
Beginning with the green round, the season saw the Juventus team fly, with a spectacular streak of 12 consecutive victories. The group was not initially given as the one with the higher sounding names of the A2, but the group turned out to be very solid, with Jalen Cannon as a reference American close to the basket, as it has often been for many clubs in the cadet series, e Jamarr Sanders at his third time with coach Ramondino.
To all this must be added the ability to recover after the start of a negative streak, which led Turin to take the top of the group, but the team, with the control room Mascolo and Tavernelli and Agustin Fabi to guarantee a lot of experience in the category, he was able to react well in the clock phase: the three wins at home before the playoffs, played with the addition of Lorenzo D’Ercole in the meantime released from Venice. The confrontation with Ravenna was immediately complicated, won in the fifth after losing the home factor, and also against Eurobasket Rome, at PalaOltrepò, the plot was similar. Indeed, even more struggled: +1, -5, +2 and +1 the detachments of the four games, the first two in Tortona and the first two not in Rome, but in Ferentino (the PalAvenali could no longer be used as an exception and PalaEur was not used for cost reasons). And then, the spectacular final series in Piedmontese sauce.
This is the roster of the promotion: Samuel Sackey, Jalen Cannon, Giulio Gazzotti, Lorenzo Ambrosin, Riccardo Tavernelli, Lorenzo D’Ercole, Agustin Fabi, Bruno Mascolo, Luca Severini, Jamarr Sanders, Alessandro Morgillo.
That the company chaired by Roberto Tava was doing things big had been known for some time: in fact we want to build a new sports hall, much larger than the current one and make it a great point of reference, a sort of Citadel of sport. A long history, that of the Bianconeri, however, which came to the fore in the 2008-2009 season. He was in Serie C2, the team, and he came Petar Naumoski, one who had seen a lot of basketball at the highest level in the past. From the middle of the decade just past Tortona has established itself as one of the main powers of A2, often reaching the top of its group and only making a mistake in the 2018-2019 season. Now comes a great joy for a city of just under 30,000 inhabitants, in the province of Alessandria, that knows basketball well and that in the past had had the satisfaction of winning the Italian LNP Cup and the LNP Super Cup.
Tortona joins Naples in the category of promoted to Serie A, one from the silver playoff board (this year divided into two separate and uncrossable sections), the other from the gold board. On 29 June, therefore, a year is completed that has been marked by many difficulties, and above all by an immense number of postponements due to Covid-19. Now Italian basketball will focus entirely on Belgrade, but it is undeniable that this year, perhaps, has really been one that is worth at least five.
Credit: Ciamillo
