This is a story that fans of the “minors”, the categories of basketball furthest from the top, would love to go crazy. It tells of the cross between a champion accustomed to professionalism, with about eighty games between NBA and Euroleague, who stayed in Italy for love, and a player who laces his shoes before each training, especially for passion. Before Zeta Esse Ti-Gallarate made them meet, in the quarter-final of the C Gold playoffs, Alex Acker was used to big arenas: in 2016/2017 he was still in Serie A in Cantù. Martino Maffeo, in the same season, was already playing in the Teens but in the Promotion championship, starting from there the climb that with three promotions in a row brought today’s biancoblù one step away from the semifinal, for which it would be enough to lose nine points tomorrow evening in the return match.
In the 78-68 on Saturday at the Forum «Tino» he found himself in front of Acker: it happened above all in the last period, when the «Dream Teens» crowned a comeback from -15 putting the arrow with a triple from Bergamaschi and not leaving the match command no longer. Shortly after that overtaking, a cult scene took place: Acker asks for the ball back to the basket, Maffeo approaches him and makes himself heard, chest to back. Then, as soon as the American seeks support to get closer to the iron, the defender gets up and makes him lose his balance. The result? The former Nba on the ground and the ball that flies to the other half for the +5 signed by Squizzato. That frame was not Maffeo’s only masterpiece, a degree in Philosophy and a professorship in the Itis Quintino Sella faculty in the city: of the 11 points on his scoreboard, 9 arrived thanks to three triples, essential to keep afloat the team of coach Bertetti before the long interval, to which it arrived at -4. Without forgetting the rebounds, the balls soiled or recovered, the assists. And then until the break, Acker had scored 13 points. He finished at 16, with the last (and only) basket granted by Maffeo in the last minute, once the games were over. “I’m proud to be able to defend these colors again,” he said on the eve of the game, he who is the only one left in the Promotion squad. A pride-minors that today shines like the sun.