The UCAM is already halfway through a season in which the best version has only occasionally arrived
The 2022-2023 season was (is) the return to dual competition for UCAM, with a completely revamped squad compared to a previous season where nine players from the previous continued. So patience and confidence were two factors to hang on to more than in the near past before Sito Alonso’s team reached boiling point. Without the second, the first factor does not exist, but neither is sustainable and after more than 50% of the season has been consumed, the best version of UCAM has adopted a Guadiana complex, which appears only at certain times.
The last weekend of the Copa del Rey played allowed the break to make a halftime and rest analysis for a team with many miles in its legs, but which would undoubtedly have preferred to spend a few days in Badalona; just like a year ago in Granada, where he played a leading role in the most attractive mid-season tournament on the FIBA planet, a tournament that took 26 years to live again from the inside and is played for the first time in its history since the Cup in the current final stage format.
This year, the Murcians were not in Badalona, the basketball home of Sito Alonso. Close to the appointment in victories, a little further in thrills. And it is that to this day UCAM is two wins away from an eighth place finish that can already be read as a ‘play-off’… four teams leading the way. Under current qualifying formats, UCAM has only one participation in the Copa del Rey, that of last year, as well as its only participation in the title qualifiers, that of the 2015-16 campaign.
Making a double and counting for two of the latter is what an already historic team grazed in Murcia last year. And that, as always happens with medium-sized clubs when they have a successful season, it was dismantled for the next season (this season). However, the confidence since the work of the Murcian offices always ensured a squad that did not include the two big stars of the last two years (Isaiah Taylor and James Webb III, both in the Euroleague today), but important names, on paper, not much to envy last season.
However, with the progression of the basketball calendar, there is still no version of UCAM capable of prolonging the best moments and avoiding the appearance of the bad ones. In addition to the sticker change and the addition of the European league, we also had to add a forced style change in Sito Alonso’s notebook, which featured the highest inside clearance in the club’s history. It is here where the offensive role comes into play, with a Nemanja Radovic enjoying (and reacting) with more balls at the low post and trying to integrate Artem Pustovyi, a 2.19m player with seven seasons of experience in the League. Endesa and at the highest European level with Barça.
The Ukrainian giant is to some extent the team’s thermometer. He has interspersed great performances with games where he went completely unnoticed, barely touching the ball, and others where the only thing that set him apart from discretion was his ability to take mistakes. Still, he’s a man who approves of the season. And this is perhaps the big problem for UCAM this season, that the signings, without being far from their best level, also fall short of expectations. It’s happening to James Anderson (his best game was just the last), a two-time Euroleague champion for whom 8.3 points per game in the Endesa League seems low and who is resisting a return to a leadership role later in recent seasons and takes on inferior roles in large shifts.
Diop is far from being the one Sito met in Baskonia, Luther has barely given a few flashes, Jelínek’s season is saved by his three-pointers from the play-in in Izmir and Sakho cannot be asked for miracles. Klavzar and Andronikashvili, unqualified. Giffey, an oasis of indoor basketball. And Trices. Trice took over from big bases in Murcia and has contributed points and stats, but he has specialized in producing when he counted least and the team suffers when he leads static. News to which should be added an unknown Davis who has already been eliminated after a 3.7 game rating in his third season at UCAM.
Radovic forces the old guard to take a step forward, Radovic is the most valued player and Bellas and Rojas have had to take a step forward that, due to their role, was not theirs. For example, Sito, depending on his thirty, is in a team that came to play ten games in January.
Covering one’s head or feet is what UCAM seems to be forced to do, which, unlike the Endesa League with the ‘play-off’, starts in a favorable position for the quarter-finals of the Champions League, a competition for which he is doing his utmost. did. brave moments this season with that play-in draw against the already intimate Pinar Karsiyaka. With half of the ‘top 16’ completed, UCAM is second in Group L (the first two advance to the qualifiers ahead of the ‘Final Four’) after falling in Tenerife, but beating Bilbao (90-72) and the Darussafaka (96 -87).
Now, with a two-week break between the Copa del Rey and the next FIBA windows, the team is enjoying a well-deserved rest. The players need to give more of themselves where they least expect it and a chance for a restart for the players whose adaptation and performance are key to elevating the game of a team that, if it continues without finding the key to bid continuity to its best basketball, there will come a time when they will see themselves with no other way out than to choose which of their two leagues will throw all the meat on the spit.
Source: La Verdad
I am Shawn Partain, a journalist and content creator working for the Today Times Live. I specialize in sports journalism, writing articles that cover major sporting events and news stories. With a passion for storytelling and an eye for detail, I strive to be accurate and insightful in my work.
