SOUSA, JEAN MANUEL
STB Le Havre
"We made a good first half. Starting the second though, we lost too many balls and gave them confidence. They scored at that time of the game and made the difference quite quickly indeed. We tried a zone defense and a press tactic but we never really managed to catch up all this late. We lost way too many balls.
It was a good game tonight. We played well: better percentage, more rebounds, and more free throws. Once more, what killed us more than anything else were the too many turnovers.
We have a lot of injured or not available players. Strong's contract ended last Saturday, Bojic is still caught with a tendinitis, and also caught a cold; and Duport is still injured, and won't came back before February, in the best of cases. Unfortunately, I also lost Bernage yesterday night. He rendered enormous services and would have rendered even more in the next days. Once more, we lose another good player. It is sure that tonight he would have played as I foresaw initially, but this is sport. When seeing all injured players, one can say that tonight's result is good: with a really small rotation, we showed that we had interesting resources.
Our difficulties this season first can be explained through a mistake of mine. I picked a player who wasn't ready at all for sport, and even less for high level competition, who was Kentrell Gransberry. Then, we also had some troubles with the Gymnasium which obliged us to postpone some games earlier in the season, and we weren't ready at all for such a situation. That can explain our catastrophic early season.
That said, Eurocup is a perfect way for us, meaning the players and myself, to learn. We also learned a lot on the surroundings of other basketball teams, etc. Travelling is an enriching experience when considering that point of view. On a general point, this experience has been exclusively positive for us. However, it would be great if we could win at least one game, because media always refer to Roanne or Asvel, but we rarely have an article. We sometimes even didn't have a single word, even though we are competing in Eurocup. It would be great to show them that we also are here, and existing."