Ettore Messina, Head Coach

Coach, tell us about your team's roster for the next Euroleague season, what changes you made and what improvements you expect to gain from those decisions?
"We lost some main players in Papaloukas, David Andersen and Marcus Goree, but I think we signed some excellent players. Terence Morris can give us the versatility at the four position and athletic ability that we missed last season. And he can match together very well with Smodis. Erazem Lorbek, who I think was the Rising Star for the Euroleague three years ago, is a great, great talent in my opinion. He needs I think to become more consistent and to learn his position defensively, but he can do a lot of things: rebounds, shoot under the basket, post up, make nice passes even shoot three pointers. So he’s a versatile player. From Zoran Planinic we do not expect that he tries to be like Papaloukas, because he’s Zoran Planinic. He has his own style, his own game, and we think that his abilities, his size, his leadership and his vision can be extremely helpful to our team. So we hope that they can combine well with the group of veterans and help us to be again one more time champions. I think that the basic principles stay the same. Generally speaking, not to make it too complicated, we try to play good defense without too many rotations because I think rotations are not good in our mode of basketball. And offensively we try to move the ball among the players to find the open man. To shoot the ball with an open man rather than taking a contested shot. So these are the basic rules, but obviously we will try to adjust all our plays and situations to the individual talent that we have."
How much can you learn from the preseason about your team? What signs do you look for now that will help when the Euroleague starts?
"I think that preseason is very important. You need the preseason to create as many problems as possible for your team, because when the season starts, you will not have time to find out who will take you up on the problem. So I don’t believe the preseason is a moment where everything must go smooth and at the same time we are lucky because this is my fourth season at CSKA and it is the first time that I have the whole team back from the national team at the time of training camp. So I am really looking forward to using this period in the best possible way."
What are your goals going into the new Euroleague season?
"It's even harder than before. There has been a rise in the budgets of many top teams. There are teams like Efes Pilsen, who have completely rebuilt and signed a lot of excellent players and an excellent coach, so I think there is a lot of expansion in the competitiveness of our league. And one more time I believe really it will be more difficult to make the Final Four than to win it, because when you have to win two games to win the Euroleague, anything can happen, but when you have to play 20 games to make the Final Four..."
What are your goals going into the new Euroleague season?
"As always, our goals are in Russia to win one more time the title and in the Euroleague to make it to the Final Four. I think it’s not smart to say when you start the season that you want to win the Final Four, because just one bad day or a small injury can determine the outcome of that game. So I think it’s very important to focus in trying to make the Final Four and understanding that the road will be tough."