U-BT Cluj-Napoca guard Patrick Richard introduces his new blog on the official EuroCup website.
Patrick Richard, Cluj: 'We are definitely hungry for more'
Blogs
8 Mins read
U-BT Cluj-Napoca is in its second BKT EuroCup season and continues taking giant steps forward. In previous seasons, Cluj has become the team to beat in Romanian basketball and is now trying to make history by reaching the EuroCup Playoffs. Patrick Richard has been making good things happen in Cluj for the last five seasons, becoming a fan favorite for thousands of fans in the city. Richard finished his college career at McNeese State University, where NBA legend Joe Dumars and former EuroCup champion Demond Mallet also studied. He played in Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Israel, Spain and New Zealand before joining Cluj, where Richard and his family found a home. Don't miss his EuroCup blog as Cluj keeps battling for a playoff spot during the 2023-24 season!
Hello, EuroCup Fans! This is Patrick Richard of U-BT Cluj-Napoca. Right now, we are 7-2 in our group and come off an unbelievable home win against Lietkabelis. If you are a fan and you were at the game, you probably liked it more than even us because it was a lot of offense, a lot of points, a lot of mood swings, I guess you could say. They had a big run in the fourth quarter and but we still kept our composure and were able to find a way to take control of the game in overtime again. So yeah, it was pretty crazy from a fan's perspective and then for us, too. It was an important game for us. An important win after coming off the tough loss against Gran Canaria.
We had a comfortable lead but they kept playing. They play in a certain way and all of the guys on the court normally can shoot the basketball, so they are pretty hard to defend. But we never got down even though they made the run. We hit some big shots of our own and D.J. Seeley kind of took over for us personally too. Jarell Eddie hit some big shots and then once we got into overtime we were able to get a few stops that we needed to get, even though we still found ways to help them get back in the game with offensive rebounds. We fought, really wanted to win this game and found a way to do it.
"We fought, really wanted to win this game and found a way to do it."
I mentioned Jarell Eddie. I have been playing for 12 years and he is probably the best shooter I have played with, and seeing him on a daily basis, what he does before and after practice, working out, shooting and stuff like that... I can see why he shoots like that. He's got the quickest release. He doesn't need much space, and we trust him to take some shots and we know he will, so we have confidence in him. And he's been doing this his whole career. He has his own routines and different things he does. But I know every day after practice, he and Bryce Jones pair up, me and D.J. Seeley pair up, Adam Mokoka and Guzman pair up. We pretty much all get the shots in after practices every day to just get those reps in that we don't get in practice to try to keep it fine-tuned. But this guy is automatic, man!
He can not play for 20 minutes and come in the game immediately and catch and shoot like it's no problem. He is a pure shooter! Off the court, this dude is a clown, a jokester, and also a big family guy. Around the team, he is the one who has the energy all the time. He talks a lot, is always joking and always lightens the mood up. Before this season, I didn't know him personally, so I didn't know how he was as a person off the court. I just knew who he was basketball-wise. But meeting him, yeah, he's a big jokester!
This is my fifth season in this club. My first year coming here, I definitely didn't know what to expect. I didn't know much about Romanian basketball at all. I only knew of this team already because I had played against them before when I was with a previous club in the BCL, so I just knew of them, but I didn't know anything about the country, the basketball. But for me personally, I was coming off of an injury the year before and they showed a lot of interest in me. They wanted me to come here and just be myself, who I always have been. And I just felt comfortable from day one, and it's a big thing for me to feel comfortable.
When my family also felt comfortable, my wife and my kids, I knew it could be a perfect match, and I saw the vision of the club and the trajectory that it was going in. Literally, we played the FIBA Europe Cup qualifiers in my first year and now, this is our second EuroCup season. I saw the club's vision and wanted to be a part of something like that. I always wanted to play somewhere for more than one season. I was bouncing around one year, one year, one year: it was pretty annoying doing that. So coming somewhere where I could find a home, my kids found schools and everyone felt comfortable, it was a no-brainer.
Cluj has grown each year, obviously with the results, but had loyal fans from the beginning. At first, we weren't having these big crowds, but over the years we just kept growing, kept growing and then we started winning the domestic championships year after year, so that brings the interest. And then every year we just kept improving. Last season, we finished the EuroCup regular season with a 5-13 record and are now 7-2. The players who stayed have more EuroCup experience and we made good signings. I think it's a mixture of both because because last year, we lost a lot of close games, too. It was our first year at that level as a club. Some guys on our team had played at that level, but as a team, as a club, we had never been a part of nothing like that. Keeping a core of players like me, Stipanovic and Guzman, and then bringing in some guys with a lot of experience and success in Europe, that have played in the EuroLeague, the EuroCup, even the NBA, everybody bought in from the beginning. There were no egos or anything like that. From the first day, everybody bought in and we just built a great chemistry off the court, and it translated to on the court. It's been going well so far but we are definitely hungry for more. We're not playing a nine-game season.
"I saw the club's vision and wanted to be a part of something like that."
I know it's cliche for everybody, a lot of teams and players say it, but we literally take it one game at a time. We play a EuroCup game and solely focus on the next domestic game and we go straight to the EuroCup. We play against Turk Telekom, which has been struggling but they have a good roster with talented players. They have had some games that they probably should have won and didn't win, so these guys won't back down, but we are going to go there, focus on that game and try to get it.
And then we come back home for two more games in front of our fans. Finishing in one of the top two places in our group is definitely a goal of the team right now, to get that bye in the first round and make it straight to the quarterfinals. And I always try to encourage the fans to continue to support us in good times and bad. They have always been loyal and I know they will continue to keep coming in big numbers and supporting us. Hopefully, we can sell the arena out again like we did against Gran Canaria with 10,000 fans, but just keep on showing what this club is about, what Romanian basketball is trying to become, and putting Romania on the basketball map, because it's not known. We are not known for basketball in this country, but in Cluj, we are a little hotbed right now. We kind of got a buzz going on, so we want to keep that going.