The three-persons block of Diatec Trentino stands in front of the attack of the former player Osmany Juantorena
ph. Trabalza
Trento, January 14th 2018
This Sunday Diatec Trentino will play in the big match of the weekend of 2017/2018 SuperLega UnipolSai against Cucine Lube Civitanova; the beginning of the match is scheduled at 6 pm of Sunday January 14th in PalaTrento, broadcast live on RAI Sport + HD and Radio Dolomiti.
HERE DIATEC TRENTINO Coming from nine consecutive wins in regular season (best streak of the last three seasons) and from a whole week fully dedicated to trainings (the 17th round of regular season will be played on Wednesday January 24th in Bari against Castellana Grotte) Diatec Trentino approaches one of the most difficult challenges of the season with the curiosity of testing its own competitivity also in view of the upcoming Coppa Italia Final Four. The team will play a remake of 2017 Scudetto Final without Daniele De Pandis, out due to a right meniscus injury. In his place, just like in the match against Ravenna, Matteo Chiappa.
“Obviously without a player such as De Pandis we might have something less in receiving, especially against a team that has such skillful players at the serve, but we have total trust in Chiappa - explained coach Angelo Lorenzetti -. It’s a great occasion for Matteo; he must keep calm, because his teammates are very skilled and ready to help him. Playing against Lube is an important moment of comparison for us, we can improve and be ready. Beyond the result, very important anyway, our goal is to play a long match and keep up with the performance of Civitanova”.
All twelve players (except Chiappa) are regularly available and will do two training sessions before match, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning in PalaTrento.
Trentino Volley will play its 737th official match (512 wins, 224 defeats), the 336th in PalaTrento and trying to win the 267th win on home court. The last defeat dates back to November 15th against Perugia (3-0).
THE OPPONENTS Cucine Lube Civitanova arrives to PalaTrento for the first time since the Scudetto Final of last year and with uncertainty regarding Osmany Juantorena; the Italian/Cuban spiker (best player with weighted average in SuperLega), with Sokolov one of the two big former players, had to leave the field during the second set in the home match against Latina, due to a back muscular injury, and it is not to be taken for granted that he will begin in the starting six. In this case, coach Medei will choose the diagonal Kovar-Sander. The team from Marche really needs to put the hand on the three points in order to keep close to Perugia in the rank, which took the first place in the last match of the first round. Trento will face not only the team that scored the most break points (443 in seventeen matches), but also the second-best block of the league (151 blocks) and one of the best serve.
THE BACKGROUND With fifty-seven official played matches, Cucine Lube Civitanova is the second Club which Trentino Volley played against in its eighteen seasons of activity, preceded only by Modena (68). The overall balance is in favor of the yellow-blues 30-27, despite the fact that in 2017 the team from Marche won six times in six matches, obtaining a victory at PalaTrento as well (3-2 on May 4th). The stadium of via Fersina has still often rejected the siege of the hosts: in twenty-two played matches Lube has in fact only won seven matches at PalaTrento and the victory in match 2 of Finale Scudetto 2017 was the only one victory in the four recent previous matches. The match played in the going round on November 1st was instead significantly won by Lube, which defeated the yellow-blue team in just three sets, 25-22, 30-28, 29-27 and Sander mvp (17 scored with 58% at the net and two blocks).
REFEREES The referees who will direct the match will be Stefano Cesare (from Rome, referee from 1999 and international referee from 2010) and Alessandro Tanasi (from Siracusa, in Serie A from 2002). The two referees are at the first match together in SuperLega Unipolsai 2017/18, the tenth for Cesare (third seasonal match with Trento, after the 0-3 in Perugia and the 3-2 in Vibo Valentia), the ninth for Tanasi (last previous match with Diatec Trentino was on February 26th, 3-0 victory in Monza).
TV, RADIO AND INTERNET Trento-Civitanova will be a global mediatic event, benefitting from the live broadcast on tv, on the radio and on the Internet. It will be in fact broadcast by RAI SPORT + HD, channel present both on the digital platform (channel 57 in HD, 58 in standard quality) and on the satellite platform of Sky on channel 227, with live commentary by Maurizio Colantoni and Andrea Lucchetta; the match will be also widespread on the Internet in streaming video-audio by clicking at www.raisport.rai.it/dl/raisport/multimedia/diretta.html and will count on an intercontinental visibility (twenty-six nations will be connected) thanks to the live broadcasts offered by Band Sports, Sportsklub, Sportsklub Poland, Dowaly/Kuwait Sport, Sportmax Caraibi, Telesports, Ote, Saran and Img.
It is scheduled, as always, a live coverage offered by Radio Dolomiti, radio partner of Trentino Volley, starting from 6 p.m. with the voices of Stefano Piffer and Andrea Cobbe. All the frequencies to listen to the regional network are available on the home page of the site of Club, www.trentinovolley.it, whereas at www.radiodolomiti.com will be also possible to listen to the live commentary of the match in streaming, by accessing the “On Air” section.
The deferred coverage of the match will be broadcast on tv on Monday January 15th at 21.50, on RTTR – tv partner of Trentino Volley.
Lastly, on the Internet, will be available point-to-point updates offered by the official site of Lega Pallavolo Serie A (www.legavolley.it) and by www.trentinovolley.it and will always be active on the yellow-blue Social Networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).
HOAG IS AWARDED WITH THE “UNIPOLSAI MVP” PRIZE OF DICEMBER 2017 On Sunday, just before the start of the match there will be space for a particularly meaningful moment that will concerns Nicholas Hoag: the spiker of Diatec Trentino will be awarded with the prize for the best Unipolsai player in the month of December 2017 in SuperLega by Lega Pallavolo Serie A. The Canadian player could reach this prestigious prize by winning the mvp title in two of the five matches of regular season played in December (versus Vibo Valentia and Monza).
TICKETS, MECHANDISING AND “CAVIT DAY” The pre-sale of tickets will be active until Saturday night at 7 p.m. at the offices of Promoevent, in via Suffragio 10 in Trento and every moment on the Internet by clicking at http://www.vivaticket.it/ita/event/diatec-trentino-civitanova/108334. On Sunday the cashiers of PalaTrento will be active starting from 5 p.m., the same moment in which the entrances of PalaTrento will be opened. The cashiers will remain active until the start of the second set, from that moment it won’t be possible anymore to enter PalaTrento to see the rest of the match.In the stadium, just behind the long bleachers on the north side, the supporters will find at their disposal the yellow-blue merchandising point; a very wide range of Trentino Volley items are being sold. PalaTrento will also host the “Cavit Day
”; to offer further visibility to the long-standing partnership, Trentino Volley and Cavit will organize a series of initiatives which will see the cooperative, which combines ten local cooperative wine cellars with 4.500 associated wine-growers, as protagonist on the Match Program, in the Hospitality Area and on the LEDs of PalaTrento, all of them strongly characterized by the Cavit logo for the occasion.
The mvp prize will be offered by Cavit as well and will be chosen by a jury of journalists: a three-litre Jeroboam will be given to the most voted player so he could raise a glass with his teammates for the fine performance just shown.
Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office
SuperLega UnipolSai 2017/18, standing and game day 18 schedule
