On Sunday 28 December with a “two-ball” at 6.00 pm, UEB Cividale will be on stage at the PalaRadi in Cremona on the last day of the first round to face Ferraroni Juvi with the aim of closing a calendar year truly full of satisfactions with a victory and leaving no stone unturned in the race to qualify for the final four of the Italian Cup. The result until the eve of the home match against Avellino was in the hands of the gialloblù alone, but the defeat against the Irpinia team reduced the ducali’s chances to a sliver because the other results on Sunday created a real traffic jam at the top of the table, with 7 teams that can theoretically aspire to the 3 places which will be added to that of the already qualified leaders VL Pesaro and in the 108 possible combinations of finishing on equal points, there are now only 12 those favorable to Pillastrini’s boys.
Gesteco will find themselves facing an opponent who currently occupies the third to last place in the standings, the result of a run of 6 victories and 12 defeats and will be animated by a great “hunger” to get a result to get out of the quicksand of the bottom of the standings. Coach Luca Bechi has a roster at his disposal that has recently added the talented Kadeem Allen, who arrived via Forlì to replace Trevor McConico, to team up with compatriot Billy Garrett, a point guard who currently shoots from the arc with 36% and 12.8 points on average per game. The Italian patrol is made up of the veteran Alessandro Panni, the experts Andrea La Torre, Matias Bortolin, Ruben Zugno, Edoardo Del Cadia, Simone Barbante and a patrol of young people, including Michele Del Vecchio (2007), Vittorio Bartoli (2002), Tommaso Vecchiola (2004), Gregorio Allinei (2004), Massimo Fiodo (2006) and Matteo Di Croce (2006).
The precedents between the two companies are 5 and see Gesteco leading 3-2; the first matches date back to the 2021/22 series B tournament and ended in a draw, with the two teams maintaining the field factor and battling throughout the regular season for the top 2 places in the table, while in series A2 Cividale conquered PalaRadi in the clock phase of the 2023/24 tournament and the last championship ended in a draw, with Cremona winning at home and Gesteco ready to return the “slap” in the group return to via Perusini.
As Stefano Pillastrini he expressed himself on the eve of the match: “We are trying to recover after this tour de force that we had to endure before the Christmas period and I believe that this complete week of training and recovery of energy has done us good; we will try to demonstrate it by winning away on the pitch of a team that has great motivation, knowing full well that winning away from home is always a very complicated thing. However, we want to achieve the appointment with victory and we will try to be as competitive as possible”.
Martino Mastellari still cultivates some hope in the possibility of accessing the final four of the Italian Cup: “In Cremona we will need to play a solid match because we want to close the first round with a victory and still cultivate the last hopes to qualify for the Italian Cup, even if right now the mathematics leaves us with very few. A tough team awaits us, trained well with clear points of reference; therefore, we will need a match made up of great energy and great defensive application, things that we have lacked a bit in the last two matches”.
The match will be directed by referees Marco Rudellat of Nuoro, Daniela Gai of Rome and Francesco Cattani of Rieti and will be visible in live streaming on LNP Pass and deferred at 10.00 pm on Telefriuli, channel 11 of digital terrestrial. You will be able to follow the progress of the match on the official social channels of UEB Cividale.
Related reading
