Zalgiris (3-2) will look to bounce back from last week's heavy home loss to Valencia against an ASVEL team (0-5) looking for its first win of the season in new coach Giancarlo Pozzecco's road debut. With Paris Lee leading the offense by dishing 10 assists, ASVEL put up a good fight in last week's narrow loss to Virtus and will hope for a similar improvement to finally get into the W column. Big man Joffrey Lauvergne (11.8 ppg., 4.2 rpg.) returns to Kaunas to face his former team and will do battle with Zalgiris power forward Rolands Smits (14.4 ppg., 5.0 rpg.), who has also started the season well.
Pre-game quotes: Zalgiris vs. ASVEL
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Kazys Maksvytis, Zalgiris head coach
"ASVEL, which has had a change in its coaching staff, arrives to Kaunas. Usually teams play with a better emotional factor for a while after such a change, and that’s probably the case for this game as well. The team has changed, it’s still finding its way, but it has a lot of talent, a lot of height. They have a lot of veterans, a lot of physicality. First of all, we will look at ourselves, how to squeeze out the maximum, improve our game and get the win."
Gianmarco Pozzecco, ASVEL head coach
"Honestly, I haven't had enough time to think about the preparations for this game, as I'm focused on getting to know my players. In practice, my players are sending me excellent signals, which is positive for our next games. The most important thing is that we're playing good basketball, and the wins will come on their own."
Regular Season
Round 6 of 34
Regular Season
Zalgiris KaunasZAL
8891
LDLC ASVEL VilleurbanneASV
Overview
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Dovydas Giedraitis, Zalgiris player
"We have a physical opponent ahead of us. They play in a very tough French league, so ASVEL players are really physical. Let’s hope that we learn from our mistakes and show what we can do. We have to play our own basketball, we have to defend well and then we will be able to run on the fastbreak. I think ASVEL will try to play slower, not so fast, because they are older, they will try to save some energy, we’ll see what they have prepared."
Joffrey Lauvergne, ASVEL player
"With Partizan Belgrade, Kaunas was an incredible experience in my career, and I have a lot of very good memories. It was exceptional! They're passionate about basketball, with big knowledge. And it's always a great pleasure to return to this arena."