Umana Venezia – Dinamo Sassari, the derby of the round in Legabasket
The derby of Seria A round 8 will take place in Palasport Taliercio, where Venezia will host Dinamo Sassari. Both teams are in good shape with four victories and one defeat in the last five games in all competitions. Venezia has a 3-4 record in Seria A, while Sassari is in second place with a 5-1 record. The last time they met was in Supercup Final when Dinamo won 83-80 in overtime. Let’s see some stats on their last games.
In the last game, Venezia had to travel to Serbia for a big match against an unbeaten Partizan Belgrade. They lost the first game at home 63-66, but now they took the revenge with an 83-69 win. Their defense was very good, allowing Partizan to score only 37% from the field, while they have a 50% record from the field, including a 62% inside the arc. The MVP of the game, Mitchell Watt, had an impressive game finishing with 27 points (11-12 from the field), 5 assists and 5 rebounds. Alongside him, Austin Daye (13 points and 5 rebounds) and Julyan Stone (10 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists) made some nice contributions. They will need to remain focused on defense, because they handled the last match very well and if they can maintain the same level on that end of the floor, the win will come. That 3-4 record isn’t what fans expected, so they need to focus more on those games from Seria A and get in contact with the play-offs places. They have the entire roster at their disposal. Their last addition, Goudelock will miss one more month.
Dinamo Sassari has a great season until now, with eight wins and 2 defeats in all competitions. They are on a 4 win games streak, two in Seria A against Cantu and Virtus Roma and two in BCL against Oostende and Torun. In the last game against the Polish team, they smashed them with 113-95. Dwayne Evans (29 points and 5 rebounds), Marco Spissu (22 points, 7 rebounds and 8 assists) and Miro Bilan (16 points and 4 rebounds) were the top performers for Dinamo. All the team shoots the ball very well, finishing the game with 14-28 from the three-point line and 32-48 inside the arc which allowed them to score a big amount of points, continuing their offensive run, with 108 points scored before this game against Virtus Roma. Their offensive is sky high and they need to put a big number on the scoreboard if they want a win against Venezia away. They used 10 players in the last game, with 9 of them playing over 11 minutes on the court. All their players are fully fit for this game.
This match will be an intense one and the first chance to win the game has Venezia because they have their fans backing them and also, Coach De Raffaele stated that they know their opponents and know how to stop them, despite Sassari have many possibilities on the offensive end. They need to stop their offensive appetite and hold them to less than 75 points in order to have a chance to win.
Photo: championsleague.basketball
Bogdan Vasile Tirc
