Txus Vidorreta praises Kyle Guy after reaching Copa del Rey semi-finals

Txus Vidorreta He appeared at a press conference after his side’s 91-83 win to reach the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, where they will play Barca.

Bilbao coach praised the game Kyle Guy Not only in the quarter-finals, in which he scored 23 points with a PIR of 30, but also how the dynamics of his team have changed since his arrival.

These were his words:

“Kyle Guy works with a lot of passion and that’s what matters. He wants to play, he is 26 years old and he cannot go a year without playing because he has already experienced this in the NBA, when he was able to play he believes he has shown that he can continue to play, but he knows that this is the best he has not yet been able to do this in the world league, but in the Euroleague everything should have been similar. We were there quickly.

We started the year poorly and knew that we could start it badly due to injuries, late players, a difficult schedule… We overcame ourselves in a big fight, but there were unexpected relapses. And that, for a winning team like ours, forces us to act. We brought in Ilimane and Kyle Guy at almost the same time, and it became clear that with the arrival of Ili Diop, the team needed more defensive strength, and Kyle was then a player we had a lot of confidence in, despite the fact that he had a rating… 13 against us in March. We knew his abilities and trusted him completely because we believed he had everything we needed. Marcelinho always controls the playing time, but due to Jaime’s injury and Bruno taking over his role, we were missing another coach. That’s what he gives us, he gives us a lot of opportunities to have the ball in other hands and he’s a great passer, he even surprises me even though I knew he was a good passer. Even the decisive left-handed one-handed passes, which I don’t really like… Well, hey, do as many as you want.

And he has the ability to make free throws, shoot, shoot from three and back, he’s much better than I expected. So much so that I dared to take him onto the court with Mars, who usually plays in pairs, and this was not planned after the matches ended. They’re already playing together, and that’s because Kyle at the back gives us a lot of what we need. He reads the game very well and I think he’s very happy with me because I take it in, it’s things that get passed on and he feels very comfortable with our style of passing the ball and taking the initiative. He does a great job. I love talking about the band and the team, but we all know Kyle Guy changed the dynamic. This year, perhaps in fits and starts, we would have ended up playing the Copa del Rey and the playoffs, but of course we would not have reached the level of play that we had in the last month and a half.

Vidorreta also analyzed the meeting as follows:

“I think we played very well. We worked in faith for 40 minutes. Unicaja doesn’t need to repeat that many times, but she’s having a great season with a lot of confidence and showed it in the first half. We managed to equalize at the end of the first half, we took the lead following a defensive game plan and I had the feeling that we managed to maintain the pace of the game.

In the third quarter we even improved defensively, limited their success and only needed to control the rebound to be able to open up more revenue. We had some bounce which kept them alive but we found a quintet that gave us a combination of energy, confidence and ambition to win and we played fantastically late in the game. No turnovers, having the ball in the hands of Marcelinho and Kyle and controlling Unicaja when they wanted to play Osetkowski and Ejim, which usually hurts the opponents. I think we won with a great game against a great opponent and in a great atmosphere. “Very happy, but this will only allow us to continue participating in the Cup, and tomorrow we will have a new challenge.”

“To make it harder for Barcelona, ​​I told the players that we need more people. Today we only took 6 successful players. Everyone who played helped, but only 6 answered correctly. And to beat Barca, we need more players to take the same step forward that Elgin Cook did today.

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