7DAYS EuroCup, the opponents of Brescia: AS Monaco

AS Monaco basketball team was founded in 1928: the principality’s already
existing football club decided to create a basketball team, so that it became a fully fledged multi-sports club. After returning to the French Basketball
Champions League in 2015 and having spent 14 years in the third and
second divisions, the team led by the new patron, the Ukrainian Sergei
Dyadcechko and head coach Zvezdan Mitrović, embarked upon a series of
achievements winning the French national cup for three consecutive years
(2016, 2017 and 2018). Despite being ranked first for three years in a row,
the team has not succeeded in imposing itself in the playoffs and has failed to win the title.

Last season, Monaco came closer than ever to their goal of winning title.
They lost in the finals, 74-76 to Le Mans in the decisive Game 5. Moreover,
last season was also successful for the Monegasque club at a European
level: in fact, the red-and-whites reached the final 4 in the FIBA Champions
League, played in Athens. In OAKA, Monaco defeated Ludwigsburg from
Germany in the semifinals. Eventually, they lost to AEK Athens, after being so close to victory. After their excellent performance in the FIBA competition, having performed well and gained another year’s experience, AS Monaco has decided to compete for the 7DAYS EuroCup in season 2018-19, for the very first time.

THE ROSTER

For 2018-2019, the team, which won three trophies in the previous season,
wanted to continue without entirely changing the roster. Eight players have
been reconfirmed, including the Americans Gerald Robinson a n d D.J.
Cooper and the Bosnian center Elmedin Kikanovic. There will also be a
further season in red-and-white for the 29 year old Frenchman, Paul
Lacombe, after a career best season in terms of points scored. As to the new
players, two of them come from the Italian championship: Derek Needham, who played for Reggio Emilia for fifteen months, and Jarrod Jones, a power forward who used to play for Pesaro. The roster is completed by Ian Hummer, an American power forward, 201 cm tall with an impressive college history from Princeton, and also the small French forward Remy Barry, the newest player on the Monaco team.

THE COACH

Monaco’s roster remained largely unchanged, but there were significant
changes on the bench. The perception had arisen that a cycle ended, so the
club dismissed the coach, Mitrović, who is now training ASVEL Villeurbanne. His place has been taken by the Slovenian coach, Sašo Filipovski, who has coached several European teams. In 2011, he coached Virtus Roma, achieving 10 victories in 22 games in the cup and the championship. After spending two seasons in Turkey with Banvit, Filipovski now finds himself in the Principality of Monaco. He will be aiming to continue the winning cycle-building upon the one that has just finished.

THE ARENA

AS Monaco plays its home games at Salle Gaston Médecin, an arena with
3,700 seats that is located in the Fonteville district. It is a part of the Stade
Louis II sports complex, which serves as a venue for the football section of
the club. The arena, which was built in 1983 and extended in 2016 for the
home team’s comeback to Pro A League, is dedicated to the most important
Monegasque athlete in its history: Gaston Médecin, a decathlete who
competed in the Olympics in Paris in 1924 and in Amsterdam in 1928.