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Spes qualifies for the Italian Cup
 By winning against Piacenza the yellow-blue qualified, unexpectedly, for the Cup three matches before the end of the first half of the season. The quarterfinal matches will be played on 9th and 23rd March.
The match against Piacenza didn't just confirm the team at the top of the rankings, but also gave the certainty of a Cup place to Conegliano. For the moment, apart from Spes, only Novara and Busto Arsizio are qualified for the competition, gaining their spot through the Round Robin League in the pre-season tournaments. The pairs are still not known, but the matches will be played on 9th March (at home of the team with the worse record in the first half of the season) and the return on the 23rd March. The winners will then play in the Final Four. As for the league, the next round will see Spes Conegliano in an away match in Perugia, against Despar. The clash has been postponed to Monday 31st January at 20:30 because the gym is already scheduled for other matches on Sunday.
In the post-match press conference (online in Italian on Youtube.com/spesconegliano) Dragan Nesic said: “The greatest satisfaction are not the three points, but the fact that we won the match in blocks (10-8) against a team that is very strong in blocking and is welle organized between blocking and defending. We must be honest with ourselves. There are many teams in the league that are underperforming. Apart from that I can't see a second team that will get relegated. Now we have a tough match in Perugia. It will be a very important clash. The season has shown that all teams play well at home. Our objective right now is to try to get 8 thousand people in the Zoppas Arena for the match against Pesaro. We also want to try winning all home matches in the first half of the season. Obviously, we could lose 3-0 with Pesaro, but we look for a win."
The Serbian coach then talked about Valentina Fiorin and Giada Benazzi: "I must say that it is not easy to find a player who is fully ready to play and who is able to come off the bench and be decisive. Here I am talking in particular about Valentina Fiorin. Even though she was injured she didn't drop her level. She keeps to a standard and I think she will get even better. My goal right now is to try and create, probably for next season, a new attacker, Giada Benazzi. I think that the players we took this summer showed their quality. We searched for players who were ready to work hard and be ready to fight for everything, even a place in the team and we got just that."
Fiorin (in the photo of Fabio Bon) also gave her view of the match with Piacenza: "If we exclude the first set in which we started under a little pressure, we were good. We had a fine match. We kept our advantage We did well to keep concentrated. We were also good to keep with the pressure. I know that there shouldn't be any, but it is normal that if you top the table you want to stay there so you feel some pressure."
The victory against Piacenza also put Spes at the top of some statistical data. Carmen Turlea was the best player of the round in the number of successful attacks, 29, while Dobriana Rabadzhieva along with Ravetta of castellana Grotte was the best in aces, 4. After 8 matches Turlea stays the best scorer with 169 points and leads also in the number of successful attacks with 154. Meanwhile Dragana Marinkovic remained on her own at the top of the blocks rankings, with 31. As for the team, Spes is second in the number of total points, of blocks and of aces.
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