Joan Plaza, 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 signed some new players who came here to help those one who have been working for us over the last three years. Massey has arrived from Aris TT Bank, Hosley came from the Turkish League while Pepe Sanchez got here from Barcelona. We also brought back Marko Tomas after a season on loan at Alta Gestion Fuenlabrada in which he saw a lot of playing time. We all expect them to help the team in specific situations in which we had some troubles last year. We are going to try to play closer to the basket and harder in defense. We thought they can help us a lot in these issues."
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?
"We had some big troubles in pre-season because we were waiting for five guys in our team, for many reasons. Some of them were playing the Olympics with the Spanish and Croatian national teams. Venson Hamilton has been sidelined for the best part of the last two years. He is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, as he will begin to work with us next week. Massey has been playing the EuroBasket Qualifying Round with FYROM and Axel Hervelle has some knee problems. As for the rest of the teams in our group, we know that they are playing at a very good level. CSKA, for instance, has played against some good teams in Italy and Moscow. We are going to try to start competing after some good pre-season games. We have a tough start against Unicaja in the Spanish League season. That's when we will see if we have enough time to be ready for the big battle."
Now that all the other teams have mostly completed their rosters, how does the competition in the Euroleague this season look like to you?
"We have learned a lot from last year, in which we won our regular season group and were also first in the Top 16 before the last game of that phase against Olympiacos. We did not manage to make it to the playoffs, however, and ran out of chances to play the Final Four in Madrid. This season we will try to grow up step by step, be more consistent in some specific games. Everybody wants to be in the situation than Real Madrid was last season. We led our Euroleague group and the Spanish League regular season at some point. Finally we lost a couple of important games and were out of both competitions. We learned from our mistakes and are ready to take one game at the time. Maybe we will lose more games but the main goal is to make our fans happy with good news in terms of titles."
What are your goals going into the new Euroleague season?
"We have seen, especially in Spanish basketball, that some of the European players that were in the NBA are coming back. We know that a lot of teams are signing good players coming back from the NBA. The Euroleague is growing and the competition is giving people more expectation. It is a very consolidated competition which becomes more and more difficult for everyone. Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, CSKA, Maccabi or Barcelona are investing a lot of money in good signings. We believe in ourselves as a team. We think we can beat anybody."