Cajasol Seville lost 77-93 in its first game of the season against UCAM Murcia, playing a horrible game in front of its fans. Matt Gatens and Marcus Lewis were the best players of the game, alongside with Brian Asbury, a local player who scored 19 points in a losing effort.
Pre-season games are good to let fans know the new names in their team. This year, Cajasol Seville didn’t play any opening game at home, so this was the first contact for the fans with the new players. And the first impression was terrible. Right now, there is no team at all. They don’t play as a team. UCAM Murcia came to Seville and got an easy win just because they played as a team, doing what they are good at, and proving to know each other much more than Cajasol players do.
The local team only managed to be in the game during the first half, because after the first two quarters Josep Franch took control and Murcia started to get small advantages. Since they never got an answer from Cajasol, they continued to increase their lead up until almost twenty points. And the game ended as easily as started. Only Asbury, the new scoring leader of the team, and Triguero, surprisingly reborn as the starting center of the team after some years, had good minutes on the court.
Nobody found his place in Cajasol, not even old players like Satoransky, Bogdanovic or Tepic, who apparently will not only play as a point guard but also as a shooting guard if the rival is strong. As to Bogdanovic, he will have to find new ways to score this season. The team plays completely different from last year. Cajasol doesn’t have a dominating player inside anymore. Triguero can score, but he’s no Paul Davis. He will never be double-teamed. So this ball movement in-and-out to open spaces for outside shooters can’t be done so usually, and the Serbian power forward will see how his stats decrease this season.
Another fact is that the points on the paint will be scored mostly by backcourt players. Over and over Satoransky and Asbury tried to play inside against smaller rivals, but this option not always worked. In fact, almost nothing worked. Aíto García Reneses, local coach, continued to test different players, as in pre-season games, so the local fans had the chance not only to know Porzingis, one of the hot prospects in Europe, but also enjoy good minutes by Burjanadze and Balvin, young players already known last season.
We guess that, in the end, Cajasol approached the match as a pre-season test, since there are some new key players yet to adjust and a lot of gaps to fill with their help and a couple of young prospect with a lot of thing to learn. We are sure that Aíto still has a couple of lessons to teach.
77 – Cajasol (23+14+20+20): Satoransky (11), Holland (6), Asbury (19), Bogdanovic (7), Triguero (15) –starting five-, Sastre (-), Tepic (3), Burjanadze (3), Porzingis (-), Balvin (4), Buckman (9)
93 – UCAM Murcia (20+26+26+21): Franch (2), Gatens (18), Berni Rodríguez (11), Barlow (12), Lewis (15) –starting five-, Antelo (5), Tillie (5), Servera (2), Jasen (14), Miso (9)
