After the last two commitments of great difficulty for the FIBA windows, today he Basketball Girona has a new chance -more favorable- against Bilbao to get back to the game and the sensations of the first weeks of the year and improve their aspirations in the rest of the season.
The defeats against Unicaja and Valencia, as good as they were matches that were already considered complicated, have slowed down the positive dynamics of before the shutdown due to the windows and, as the coach of Girona has acknowledged on several occasions , Aíto García Reneses, the team is re-assimilating some automatisms that had been left in the fridge during the three weeks without ACB.
All in all, however, it should not set off the alarms, since in the second half against the Valencians the team showed a clearly improved version that now needs to be consolidated and sustained for more minutes. It will be necessary, of course, that important players like Gasol, Colom and Fjellerup recover their best version. Aíto will have all the players available to achieve the ninth victory of the season.
At the classification level, the situation remains favorable in terms of being able to certify the main objective of the season, permanence. But it’s not worth it, because with this afternoon’s victory of BAXI Manresa, the difference has been reduced to three games. In fact, the almost definitive step could be done next week a Fontajau in the visit of the Bages team.
What does seem like a chimera is being able to fight to enter the play-offs – if it has ever been a realistic aspiration – but not so much to opt for the European places, since the difference with eleventh place is only one victory. And whoever occupies this position is precisely this Sunday’s opponent.
The Bilbao peoplewho suffered the best version of Basketball Girona in Fontajau a couple of months ago, they are going through the worst time of the season and are losing the revelation team status they had won – together with Breogán – during the first round. Jaume Ponsarnau’s men have only won one in the last seven games -against Granada before the Cup- and, in general, they are having a lot of problems to compete.
Bilbao’s problems can mainly be explained by the decline in Ludde Hakanson’s performance. The Swedish base, coming from the lower categories of Barça, was signing some stratospheric figures just before the visit to Fontajau, with 15.2 points on averageand in some engagements even he had scored thirty points.
As if the great defense put up by Básquet Girona in that match had paralyzed him, the Nordic has gone on to have very discreet numbers. In the five defeats alone has added 5.8 pointsand only in the victory against Granada he reached the 15 points he now accumulates on average in the competition.
Faced with the small contribution of Hakanson, who has had to carry the team on his shoulders is Adam Smith, the other key exterior piece for Ponsarnau gear. In fact, Bilbao’s reliance on these two players is remarkable, as they score 35% of the team’s points.
However, the statistics in which the Basques shine the most are, by nature, responsible for the interior players, the caps and the cracks. In this sense, the forcefulness under the hoops of men like Kyser o Witheya piece that Ponsarnau cannot count on today due to injury.
