France Bleu Saint-Étienne Loire: The time for recovery has come for the SCBVG in your brand new Arena and its 4,200 seats. A first training session in a somewhat special atmosphere!
Alain Thinet: It’s true, there are some drill noises around us, but we have a tool that is practically finished, apart from some adjustments to be made by certain companies. The two basketball halls are ready, the same for the weight rooms, a few details still need to be settled in the locker rooms but, in any case, we are already well within our walls, the Arena is a great tool. We have everything to work well. When you are resident in such a tool, you have no room for error. We want to work there and even spend our day there.
The two months of preparation which start before the resumption of Pro B, on October 14, should allow you to tame it?
Taming the lights, the stands and their leveling, slightly harder hoops, a whole bunch of very important elements for a basketball player. This room, we discover it as our adversaries will discover it. Admittedly, we are losing a bit the very hot side of the Halle Boulloche, with a very close audience, but it is now up to us to make this Arena a cauldron.
After this season where the rise was not far, this rapid elimination in the quarter-finals of the play-offs, the desire to start a new story is very present?
The players are excited to discover our new room, to discover the new team. The desire to get back in the game is really there. We even have to slow them down a bit so that they don’t overdo it during the first training sessions. Given the time that separates us from the first league game, we will go gradually.
We are no longer a small and I hope we will not be a small in this championship. Alain Thinet
During this off-season, how have you worked to try to perfect your squad?
By trying to improve what can still be improved. Players we wanted to keep left, notably Akwasi Yeboah (Turkey) and Michael Oguine (Denain), but we still kept a big frame. We tried to replace the starters with players not with a similar profile but who could fit into the complementarity of the team that we had last season. Our recruits will bring something different compared to the players who left us, hoping that mayonnaise will take. The new ones seem to be boys with an interesting basketball IQ, so it should go pretty quickly.
You are coming out of an exceptional season, but in a Pro B that is tougher than ever (Orléans, Champagne Basket, Chalon, Antibes), what goals have you set for yourself?
We have no right today to be too modest. Saint-Chamond is beginning to be known and recognized. We cannot move forward masked like last season. We are no longer small and I hope we will not be small in this championship, but the teams are all very close to each other. It will be necessary to be both ambitious and modest, humble. Despite everything, I have confidence in my team which seems to me to be quite balanced and quite friendly. We will try to do the maximum with it.