All the keys to the return of Javi Rodríguez to Alimerka Oviedo Basketball: the key is the project

2023-07-08 04:00:27

Alimerka Oviedo Basketball will wipe the slate clean with last season. The Carbayón team is going to completely renew the coaching staff with which it will face its eleventh season in the LEB Oro and puts Javi Rodríguez (Porriño, 1979) in charge of the team, who has already trained the club for a season and a half (2018- 19 and 2019-20, when he was dismissed). Two seasons that were very different, since in the first of them the team finished the competition in fourth position, qualifying for the promotion play-off, in which they were eliminated by Ourense, while in the second they were dismissed when the The team was in the relegation zone and Natxo Lezkano arrived in its place to conclude a season that was suspended prematurely due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But Javi Rodríguez’s relationship with Alimerka Oviedo goes back a long way. He came to the club as an assistant to Carles Marco and the three years they were together were one of the club’s most brilliant periods, in which they won the Princess Cup, finishing all seasons in fourth position and playing in the promotion play-offs. After being dismissed by Oviedo Baloncesto, Javi Rodríguez began a stage with his friend Álex Mumbrú at Bilbao Basket, of ACB, where he worked as an assistant. His return to the fore came last season, when he took charge of Estudiantes, with the challenge of returning the student team to the ACB, something he did not achieve, being dismissed by the Madrid team before the end of the campaign. . The challenge that the player and coach are going to face now is very different from the one he had at Estudiantes, since the OCB’s objective is to stay in the LEB Oro. In addition, the idea is to build a long-term project and with that idea He will sign for the next three seasons. Another of the people who are going to join the technical staff of the Alimerka Oviedo first team is Álex Lesmes, the club’s youth squad, who came to play in LEB Plata with the OCB.

The hiring of Javi Rodríguez implies that Guillermo Arenas, a coach from Oviedo who managed to stay on last season, will not renew. This puts an end to a return in which Arenas fulfilled the objective of keeping the team after the dismissal of Trifón Poch and in a very difficult season. Another merit to add to the long list of services of Arenas in the OCB, which was promoted to the LEB Oro, led to the semifinals of the play-off for promotion to the ACB in the debut of the carbayón team in the second category of Spanish basketball and, in his third and final season, he remained in the category.

The intention of the Carbayón team now is to carry out a project with continuity, to try to establish bases that will be maintained over time and that are under the direction of Javi Rodríguez, who in his stage as assistant coach was one of those responsible for Oliver Arteaga signed for the OCB. In addition to the three seasons that the coach is going to sign, the two operations that the club has carried out after the end of last season have been for two years: the renewal of Marc Martí, who will become captain, and the signing of point guard Dan Duscak. Adrià Domenech also has a valid contract for the next season, although in this case only for the next season. Now that the coach has made up his mind, it remains to be seen which signings they will be able to attract to try to suffer less than last season for the goal of permanence.