JOVANOVIC: “HAVING IN MIND OUR ROSTER, WE PLAYED SATISFACTORY GAME”

In the 6th round of the ABA league, Mega Mozzart lost to Crvena zvezda mts with 81:67 (24:16 22:16, 14:16, 21:19). Coach Vladimir Jovanovic’s team was decimated in the game played in the Aleksandar Nikola hall by not playing Borisa Simanic, Malcolm Cazalon and Matej Rudan, but after a weaker first half, they played harder and more engaged in the second half, but that was not enough to jeopardize Zvezda’s victory.

At the press conference after the game, Mega’s coach Vladimir Jovanovic pointed out that he was not satisfied with the approach at the beginning of the game, but that his team in this composition got 300 percent out of them:

– I am not satisfied with how we opened the match. First of all, I mean an inadequate approach. We allowed the rival what he is the best at, but objectively it is not easy to stop Zvezda in that jump in attack and aggressive defense, which pushes you into lost balls. I am not satisfied with the first half, but in the continuation we showed some character and we played correctly. I would like to congratulate Zvezda on the deserved victory, and wish them a lot of success in the continuation, both in the ABA league and in the Euroleague. It is now up to us to close the ranks again, but in this lineup in which we played this game, we pulled out 300 percent of our possibilities. Without two players from the starting five, without practically a player in the position of “four”, I think that this is more than satisfactory for us – said Vladimir Jovanovic.

Asked to comment on the course of the season so far, strategist of Mega Mozzart said:

– We played the first game very well and expectations rose sharply. We thought that our quality was somewhat higher than it was realistic. However, we have lowered our standards. It is very important to point out that we can only measure ourselves. That is the most important item, because these players are very young. That is not an alibi, that is the commitment of my club. We have a guy who was born in 2004 and plays in the top five, and the centers are 20 years old and they played very well. We try to be as good as possible and I think we will be better, I’m even pretty sure of that. But, we will see what kind of placement it will be enough for, because we are not the only ones wondering. The league is very strong and demanding for us, every injury and virus is a big problem for us – stated Jovanovic.

Photo: Mega Mozzart/Ivica Veselinov