Ponsarnau: “We have a huge challenge and we must be not only a group, but a team of 14”

20/08/2019

The preseason began yesterday for Valencia Basket with a practice in groups, but this morning the players have placed under the command of Jaume Ponsarnau for the first collective training on the court of La Fonteta. The Taronja coach has had ten professional players: point guards Sam Van Rossom and Guillem Vives, shooting guards Joan Sastre, Vanja Marinkovic and Jordan Loyd, forwards Fernando San Emeterio, Alberto Abalde and Aaron Doornekamp, ​​the power forward Brock Motum and the center Mike Tobey.

 

The four players who remain with their national teams getting ready for the 2019 FIBA World Cup have been missing: two of the new additions such as Quino Colom (Spain) and Maurice Ndour (Senegal), as well as Bojan Dubljevic (Montenegro) and Louis Labeyrie (France). To cover these absences, up to seven young players have been part of today's practice: Guillem Ferrando, Hilmar Henningsson, Millán Jiménez, Josep Puerto, Alejandro Rivas, Alonso Faure and Tomas Pavelka.

 

Before the start of the session, coach Jaume Ponsarnau made a press conference to analyze the start of the preseason. The Taronja coach pointed out that we start “the toughest season we could imagine and we face it with great enthusiasm. And with a huge challenge, which is to do all the things that can be done well with maximum energy, maximum health and maximum strength, that will be very important. For this we have to be rigid in our planning. Regardless of this, we want to be competitive every game. We are already a group of 14 players, plus youth reinforcements. And the main objective is not to be only a group of 14 but a team of 14. And that means at the level of chemistry and at the group level to function in the locker room, on the road and especially on the court. The correlation of the players, their virtues and their non-virtues serve to get to know each other a little more. And we know how to take advantage of each other to be as competitive as possible”


TAGS: