Last night, the third round of the Universities of Rome Championship BK3 took place at Morgagni court where JCU Men’s Basketball team faced the University of Foro Italico (UFI), the American University of Rome (AUR), and UniCusano University (CUS) in three different short sets of matches.

Unfortunately, it was not a good night for our Gladiators who lost all three games. Despite their efforts, they didn’t really face the games with the usual strenght and determination.

“Due to different reasons, from school break and less practice, my players struggled more to find their head back into the game,” coach Serraino pointed out.

First game was against UFI who defeated JCU 16-12. The match went on head to head. The first part of the game was mostly domintaed by UFI who pressed more compared to our Gladiators. However, JCU reacted and performed a comeback in the second part with our striker Morrisroe who scored several points. A referee’s mistake during the last minutes of the game, though, led UFI to take the final win. The referee didn’t pay attention to UFI player kicking the ball with his foot and didn’t call a foul. This action destabilized our Gladiators and allowed the oppontents to gain the ball, score, and win the match.

Second game was against AUR who won 17-5 over JCU. Contrary to the first match where our Gladiators made an effort to overturn the result, they lost heart in this other game. JCU was completely off-focus and didn’t play homogeneously, displaying less determination in defense.

“AUR played better compared to what we are usually used to see from them. They had a good offense and set up a dynamic pace that put us in difficulty,” coach Serraino continued.

Last game was against CUS who earned a 14-10 victory over our Gladiators. This time, JCU started off strong, trying to set up a more cohesive game and score more. JCU was able to immediately take the lead, but from half of the match, the opponents started to defend more aggresively, and JCU lost some decisive occasions. In the end, CUS performed a comeback and overturned the result, winning the game.

“It wasn’t really our night,” Serraino concluded. “We tried to play as we could, and Wilfred also got injured during the game but still managed to score at the end of the third match. We have potential to do much better as we demonstrated in all the previous games, but tonight we didn’t really give our best.”

Despite JCU lost all three games last night, it still seats in second place in the general ranking. This is the updated ranking:

UFI 18
JCU 12
AUR 10
TVG 8
CUS 6

Keep it up, Gladiators! You will get what you deserve in the next games!

MVP – Luke Morrisroe (Top Scorer)