The Virtus tactician oversaw a turnaround from 11 points down to beat ASVEL by 10.
Banchi hails Virtus’s 'special night'
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Regular Season
Round 22 of 34
Regular Season
Virtus Segafredo BolognaVIR
7363
LDLC ASVEL VilleurbanneASV
Overview
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A home meeting for the third-placed team against the bottom-placed team should have been a matter of routine, but in the end, Virtus Segafredo Bologna needed a remarkable recovery to overcome LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne by a misleading 73-63 on Thursday night.
With just over 8 minutes remaining ASVEL led 48-56 and a big upset looked on the cards, with Virtus’s misfiring offense only scoring 29 points in the previous 22 minutes of game time.
But then Achille Polonara flew high for a putback slam and that boost of energy sparked a remarkable 14-0 run in just 4 minutes. ASVEL still tried to respond but Virtus had changed the momentum of the game and added further triples from Marco Belinelli and Daniel Hackett to surge clear for the win.
Delighted home team coach Luca Banchi was in no mood for understatement as he reviewed the breathless final quarter, which saw his team score 28 points, beaming: "This is a special night. We showed the values to believe until the end, to stay together until the end.
“There are nights like this when we have to find solutions, and [the players] were incredible in the way they continued to fight and compete.”
Veteran guard Daniel Hackett played a key role by netting 10 of his 19 points in the final period, and he was also overjoyed with his team’s reaction as he said: “We found something inside of us in the fourth quarter.
“We didn’t want to let the fans down and let each other down, and I think we showed a lot of character to come back and win this game.
“We went back and found our defense. In the second quarter, we didn’t impose our defense, but in the fourth quarter, we played our defense. This gave us our rhythm and we made some key plays.”
Enough key plays, indeed, to turn what could have been Virtus’s worst night of the season into a triumphant occasion.