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The preview of Albacete-Alimerka Oviedo Basketball: Return to the wire

Except for a couple of years of relative economic strength, Oviedo Baloncesto has made a living out of walking the wire. Years and years of great results with a modest template in cache. A fundamental gymnastics to not be scared by challenges like the one that begins this afternoon on the Albacete track (7:00 p.m., LaLigaSports TV). Alimerka OCB begins its tenth season in the LEB Oro, and it does so turned around with a sock, with a new coach and an almost completely renewed squad. The challenge, to survive in the category until the move to the Palacio de los Deportes may, perhaps, give birth to a more ambitious project.

The summer crisis was foreseeable, although it was not expected to be so deep. The OCB, having lost the sponsorship of Unicaja Banco, struggled and hoped to find a new firm to support it, until Alimerka appeared when alarm bells began to sound at the club. With this scenario, Natxo Lezkano, the coach who had led the team to the last two play-offs and who had shown his willingness to continue if there was room for growth, had few doubts: he packed his bags and signed for Andorra, taking with him him to his assistant, Alejandro González.

Something similar can be said of the squad, which lost its most decisive players: McDonnell (to Alicante), Kabasele (Valladolid), Jorgensen (Estudiantes), Lundqvist (Coruña) and even Atencia (released from the remaining year of his contract for sign for the Students). All of them will visit Pumarín this season with the uniform of the visiting team.

The reconstruction of the Asturian team began with the commitment to Trifón Poch, a veteran coach with extensive experience in the elite of Spanish basketball, from which he had fallen somewhat behind. Based on the continuity of Alonso Meana, Oliver Arteaga and Marc Martí, the reinforcements have been arriving slowly. The vast majority of them are unknown players in the League, with the only exceptions being Adrià Domènech, who comes from Prat, and Chuso González, who, without going any further, faced OCB in the last play-offs, in the ranks of Palencia. .

The team has three players making their debut as professionals (Romeo Crouch, Shaquille Walters and the latest to arrive, Noah Bigirumwami) and another four making their debut in the LEB Oro: Ángel Comendador, Thorir Thorbjarnarson, Nigel Pruitt and Craig LeCesne. In theory, the Rwandan Bigirumwami will stay until Martí is fully recovered from the knee injury he suffered a year ago. A five is yet to come that will give Arteaga the appropriate breaks, a sure value but who will turn 40 midway through the campaign. An operation that the OCB has been fighting for weeks and that is expected to accelerate with the start of the competition.

The main mission of Poch and his boys will be to run smoothly through the category, full of upward projects with the ACB between eyebrows. To achieve that peace of mind, it would be important to start off on the right foot, and since the calendar was announced, the first two games have been underlined in red, this afternoon on the Albacete court and next Tuesday the 11th in Pumarín against Cáceres ( 20.30). However, as if the initial difficulty was not enough, the injuries have put the team in a precarious position, which will have to face the first weeks of competition without two basic pieces such as Crouch, with a broken right hand, and Thorbjarnarson, with a fiber break. The other outside scorer, Nigel Pruitt, also suffering from muscular problems, will not be here today and is very doubtful for Tuesday. Trifón Poch has made an effort in recent days to convey a message of optimism in a sea of ​​difficulties, just before starting to walk the wire.

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