Alba Berlin was a little shocked after the start of the play-off at home. 9134 people came to the Mercedes-Benz Arena on Sunday, and certainly none of them expected the favorite to go bankrupt.
“I can’t even remember when we scored less than 70 points. That was a really bad game from our side,” said sports director Himar Ojeda after the 64:88 against Ulm – the highest defeat of the season in the league at the worst possible time.
Alba is now 1-0 down in the best-of-five series. “And no more,” said Ojeda. There isn’t much time to change anything anyway. Game two is already waiting in Ulm on Wednesday (7 p.m. / Magentasport). “Now we have to convert the anger and frustration into energy,” demanded winger Louis Olinde. But on Sunday hardly any player was in normal form. “A lot of players didn’t have their best day. It can happen, but it’s not normal,” said Ojeda.
Physically, the Ulmer were superior to the Berliners
Above all physically, Ulm surprised the favorites. “We have to change that in game two, otherwise it will be difficult for us,” said guard Jonas Mattisseck. He’s trying to wake up his team. “We have to play harder. It’s the play-offs, people act differently, the teams play differently, are much more aggressive, much more physical,” he said.
But it was a bit frightening how the Berliners collapsed in the last quarter. “In a play-off game like this it’s not about a difference in points. You just lose the game. But that was unprofessional of us, it shouldn’t happen to us. We have to keep playing and fighting,” said Mattisseck. Actually, Alba is known for staying at the limit until the end of a game.
The Berliners made a consistently inhibited impression. Hardly a ball landed in the basket in the third quarter. Significant was a basically perfect alley-oop allusion by Blatt to Thiemann. Instead of finishing with a crashing dunk, the German international put the ball completely past the basket. D
It may be a sign that the Berliners have hardly any reserves of energy after a long, complicated season. “We are much more exhausted this season than in previous years. We always reached the playoffs with a lot of energy. But this year it’s a lot harder for us to find that energy,” said Ojeda.
Maybe the load at Alba was just too high recently
The burden of the Euroleague, Bundesliga, European Championships and Olympics was simply too high. Even the ten-day break before the start of the playoffs couldn’t change that. “We were hoping it would help a little, but it didn’t help much,” said the sporting director.
Nevertheless, the situation is absurd for Berliners. They have the best main round in the club’s history behind them, have only lost three punk games and now the Berliners are under pressure after just one game in the play-offs.
“It’s difficult to beat a good team like Ulm three times in a row,” said Israel González on Sunday. “Our opponent played with more commitment today and defended better than we did. 19 turnovers for us and 14 steals from Ulm speak for themselves. We have to learn from this game and quickly get used to the intensity of the play-offs,” continued Alba’s coach. We’re behind in the series now, but it’s only 0-1. We can do better in Ulm on Wednesday. That is our focus.”
The advantage for the Berliners is that they now have some time before the second game to analyze the situation. You shouldn’t write off the favorites in the series yet.
