Time for Sergio Scariolo to make history
The Olympics ended a week ago and, as many expected, team USA won the gold medals for both men and women. In the quarterfinals, the Americans beat Spain in the last game of the Gasol brothers. So, the team coached by Sergio Scariolo didn’t win any medal, but they are still the world champions.
In fact, with Scariolo as their leader, Spain has four gold medals (three at EuroBasket, one at the World Cup), one silver medal (London, 2012), and two bronze medals (Rio, 2016 and Turkey, 2017). In the past seven years, Scariolo focused only on the national team and had only a role as an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors. However, this season he decided to return to Europe and accepted to be the head coach of Virtus Bologna.
The Italian team has a strong roster featuring the following players: Milos Teodosic, Nico Mannion, Michele Ruzzier, Marco Belinelli, Marco Ceron, Alessandro Pajola, Kyle Weems, Awudu Abass, Kevin Hervey, Amar Alibegovic, Ekpe Udoh, Mouhammadou Jaiteh, and Amedeo Tessitori.
Obviously, the objectives of Virtus Bologna are to win every competition they are playing. Last season they won the league title, but they missed the EuroCup. This season, losing in EuroCup is not an option. Sergio Scariolo has the chance to show that he is not only a great national team coach but that he can also coach very well at the club level.
More than 30 years ago, Scariolo won the Italian League with VL Pesaro. Four years later, he was named the Italian Coach of the Year when he was at the helm of Fortitudo Bologna. Can he make history with Virtus Bologna?
*photo: eurohoops.com
