Christophe Ney has led his team Arantia to the play-offs in his first season as a head-coach in Larochette, the team finished the season in 6th place and will face T71 Dudelange (3rd place) on the road on Wednesday in a single-elimination game (play-in).
Both games between these two teams were extremely thrilling during the regular season, however, Arantia will have to play without professional player Duane Johnson who suffered an injury in their season finale ( –> Duane Johnson will miss play-in game because of an injury suffered against Racing ), his absence obviously has a big influence on this game.
Your team reached the play-offs this season, what conclusions do you draw from the regular season?
We can be satisfied, not only with the results but also with the way we have played so far. Our goal going into the season was to reach the play-offs (8th place was enough in the « old » system) and we managed to finish 6th in the « new » system so that we can say that we have reached our goal in that regard. We have beaten all the teams twice that finished the season behind us in the standings with the exception of Heffingen. I also think that we showed that we play well as a team, we do not have 2 professional players that do everything, all our guys are involved in the game and have important roles.
The message about the injury of Duane Johnson obviously was a big setback before the play-in game in Dudelange. In how far does this game change without Duane?
We were already not the favorite before Duane’s injury and now even less, I expect him to be out for a few weeks. T71 knows that a very important player will miss and they can adapt to that. However, some teams have shown throughout this season that you can compete even with only one professional player. Our goal has not changed, we want to make the semi-finals. We will try to stay in the game as long as possible and in a tight game, everything could be possible in the final minutes.
In this game, 2 luxembourgish coaches will face each other (Ken Diederich for T71, Christophe Ney for Arantia), why are there not more luxembourgish coaches in the men’s Total League?
I do not know if there are many candidates to take over a TL-team. A lof of clubs tend to take professional coaches that can coach multiple teams in the club. However, the two teams that are coached by luxembourgish coaches have made the play-offs, another coach (Pit Rodenbourg for Racing) led his team to a better record than they had with a professional coach so that I think that a professional coach is no guarantee to have better results. In the women’s Total League, you can see that there are more luxembourgish coaches, some of them are even available for next season so they might also get a chance to coach a men’s team in the Total League. I think that there is no big difference between coaching a women’s or a men’s team in the first league.
You have coached the East Side Pirates for 6 years so you are clearly focused on the long-term as a coach. You recently signed an extension in Larochette, where do you see the club in 2-3 years and what needs to be done?
The club has done a great job to improve the youth program, we have strong Minis and Scolaires teams. Right now, we do not have many players in the age group 16-20. This is also a reason why we added players like Chidi Delhommais or Pierre Baustert, we need some younger guys. A lot of our players are in their 20s so that we can play a few more years with a similar team so I expect our team to be in good shape over the next years.
Reportage am Rebound vun leschter Woch (Match vum Freiden) –>D’Fiels geet mat voller Energie an d’Playoffs
Interview with Contern’s head-coach Gavin Love before their play-in game against Basket Esch –> Gavin Love: “Basket Esch is the favorite, all the pressure is on them”
Article with Alexis Kreps –> Alexis Kreps talks about this season, his predictions for the play-in games and his future
