He has played seven play-offs in the nine years of his career in the LEB Oro, and what is coming will be the fourth time that OCB has been paired with Palencia in the playoffs for promotion. The new crossing between Asturians and Castilians will be an opportunity for Unicaja Banco Oviedo to break a curse, since the three previous occasions ended with smiles from Palencia. It never mattered how the two teams would have done during the season or who had the home court advantage: when it comes to the truth, Palencia has always won the day.
The difference in results between both teams is striking depending on whether it is the regular league or the play-offs. In the first phase they have played 17 games in 9 years (the match of the second round of the 2019-20 campaign was not played because the League was suspended due to the pandemic just the day before) and the balance is 9 wins from Oviedo for 8 palentinos. In the regular season, the OCB has managed to win on a foreign court up to five times.
The play-off story is totally different. The balance is four Asturian victories for nine Castilian, and the blues have been unable to survive on the purple field. The last match was especially painful, in the quarterfinals of the 2017-18 campaign. The OCB won the first two in Pumarín and dominated much of the third in the Palacio de los Deportes de Palencia, but ended up losing that match, the fourth two days later and the fifth in the capital of the Principality, in an exercise in impotence and desperation .
Against these precedents and against the excellent level of the squad led by Pedro Rivero, Unicaja Banco Oviedo will have to fight from Thursday, which this season has prevailed over its rival in both Pumarín (79-74) and Palencia (76-80). ). Now he will have to endorse it in a best-of-five tie that starts on Thursday (8:30 p.m. in the Castilian city).
To finish resurrecting the ghosts, the rival club has just recovered Urko Otegui, who mercilessly crushed the Ocebeíst pivots in the three previous qualifiers. At nearly 41 years old, the Basque acts as a liaison between the staff and directors and as an institutional representative of the entity.
In the season of its debut in Gold, the OCB forged its legend of comebacks in Pumarín and unexpectedly entered the play-offs. They beat Coruña in the quarterfinals and semifinals, after being beaten in the first match in Palencia (87-47) and touching the feat in the second (69-65), resisted in the third (79-76) and fell in the fourth (51-63). In the image, in the front row, Van Wijk, Víctor Pérez, Daniel Fitzgerald and Álvaro Muñoz thank the Oviedo public for their support after the elimination.
The 2016-17 campaign was unforgettable for the Princess Cup title. However, the OCB did not reach the play-off in their best condition, in which they suffered greatly from Salvó’s loss. They eliminated Ourense in the quarterfinals (3-1) and faced Palencia again, who won the first in Pumarín (74-76). The Blues tied the series (74-68), but lost the next two (81-70 and 86-71). In the image, Sans and Santana, in the foreground, greet fans in Palencia.
If the first two eliminations against Palencia were painful, what about the last one. The team from Oviedo seemed on the way to revenge after winning twice at Pumarín (64-58 and 91-76). In the third, in addition, he came out like a shell in the city of Palencia (7-20), but ended up giving in (64-60). Doubts began, he played poorly in the fourth (91-81) and was gripped by nerves in the fifth (54-66). In the image, Marco gesticulates in the band while Belemene defends.
Lezkano: “The sixth is a great start”
Natxo Lezkano was the coach of Palencia in the 2013-14 tie. The Biscayan technician spent a lot of time in the capital of Palencia and knows very well the atmosphere that Unicaja Banco Oviedo will find there. “There will be a great atmosphere, it is very cool. We are also happy because the people of Oviedo will be able to travel and I hope it will be a basketball party, that we make a good play-off and hopefully we can go through”, said Lezkano after losing at Magariños. The OCB coach analyzed a regular season in which he has been through everything: “It has been very difficult, marked from the start because we couldn’t make the team we had in mind. Martí’s injury turned everything upside down, it was difficult for us to find a replacement. Then the covid issues begin, many games in a row, Frey and Martín leave at the same time and we had to restructure…”. However, the balance is good: “It seemed that in the second round we could suffer, even look down, but the new ones have given us air. The sixth is a great sunset for us. We have left real great teams behind, which triple and quadruple our budget”.
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