By Alen Obrez
Last weekend (2-4 November) the city of Soave hosted really interesting friendly youth tournament for players of U17 selection. The tournament, which is called Trophy of Soave city (Trofeo Citta' Di Soave), was already seventh in a row, so it’s already quite respected and well recognized in this region.
A always, tournament was organized by Soave Basket, in collaboration with the Provincial Basketball Federation, the city of Soave, Cazzano of Tramigna municipality, Soave volleyball club, who kindly lent the gym, and of course all the volunteers. There were eight participating teams, six of them were from Italy, one from Slovenia, and one from Czech Republic. Teams were divided in to two groups.
Group A: Pallacanestro Reggiana, Gymnazium Breclav (Czech Republic), Tezenis Verona, A.S.D. Soave Basket
Group B: Zlatorog Lasko (Slovenia), A.S.D. Basket Bancole Pontek, Ferroli San Bonifacio, A.S.D. Basket Villafranca
First round of the tournament was played on Friday and Saturday, final classification games were played on Sunday.
In the first round we had seen brilliant performances from Pallacanestro Reggiana, which was led by final MVP of the tournament, Simon Anumba (190, 1996), on the pic. He had great assistance in Federico Mussini (180, 1996), who had an amazing third game of the tournament with 27 points, and very consistent Andrea Rovatti (194, 1996), who had couple of great games, especially the one in semifinals, in which he led his team with 29 points.
We have also seen amazing performances from Slovenian side Zlatorog Lasko, which has couple of great prospects in their team. Their swingman Jure Brodnik (196, 1996) was selected as a top scorer of the tournament with average of 20.8 points per game. His best performance was on the game against A.S.D. Basket Bancole Pontek in which he had 37 points (7/12 for 3!). Their point guard Nejc Baric (178, 1997) also had an amazing second game of the tournament, where he almost had quadruple double with 20 points, 14 assists, 10 rebounds and 9 steals! We must also mention highly talented forward Urban Durnik (201, 1997), who scored 26 in the finals for Zlatorog, and led his team in semifinals. Thanks to him, team managed to make a turnaround, which led them to finals.
Both mentioned teams had no trouble coming to semifinals, where they faced A.S.D. Basket Bancole Pontek and Tezenis Verona. Zlatorog had quite a lot of problems with Verona. The Italian side led by 10 just three minutes before the end, but Slovenian side had found the way to make a turnaround, and won the game by 3 points. Reggiana outplayed Pontek by 48 points.
In the finals, Reggiana showed their strength against Slovenian side, which didn’t have its day.
Semifinals:
Pallacanestro Reggiana - A.S.D. Basket Bancole Pontek 93-45
Tezenis Verona - Zlatorog Lasko 71 - 74
Game for third place:
Tezenis Verona - A.S.D. Basket Bancole Pontek 79-65
Game for first place:
Pallacanestro Reggiana - Zlatorog Lasko 92 -74
Pallacanestro Reggiana : Mussini 19, Magnani 8, Lusvarghi 2, Anumba 12, Casu 2, Brusewitz 6, Neri, Galeotti 10, Quondam 2, Giglioli 6, Coloretti 12, Rovatti 13.
Zlatorog Lasko: Posinek, Ledl 3, Jamšek 6, Brodnik 11, Bariè 13, Zupanc 10 Durnik 26, Kajtna 2, Lisica 2
MVP: Simon Anumba (Reggiana)
Top scorer: Jure Brodnik (Zlatorog Lasko)
Photo: soavebasket.com
Twitter of the author: @AlenObrez
