AVELLINO (Basketball Champions League) – Ukrainian big man Kyrylo Fesenko was the last summer signing to join Group D participants Scandone Avellino, known affectionately as I Lupi (the wolves). An ankle injury he picked up during the FIBA EuroBasket 2017 Qualifiers meant he hardly trained with his new team-mates in September.

On Sunday night though in Serie A action, the 29-year-old Fesenko poured in 22 points and grabbed seven rebounds in just 21 minutes of play during Avellino’s narrow 87-81 loss at reigning Italian champions EA7 Emporio Armani Milano.

"We are lucky to have Kyrylo on the team, he quite literally gives us an illegal advantage when he receives in the low post with his back to the basket." - Marco Cusin

Was this a flash in the pan or is it indicative of the key role the 2.16m Ukrainian center, now finally 100% healthy, will hold in Avellino’s offensive plays in their Basketball Champions League campaign which gets under way when they travel to Mega Leks on Tuesday? The most appropriate person to reply is Italian international Marco Cusin, who sees the world from 2.10 himself and assumes the thankless task of guarding Fesenko in every practice session.

“In practice it’s really tough, on offence I have to out-run him to make the most of my attributes but when I have to defend him it’s complicated to deny him the ball. Once he receives it, it is very difficult to keep your ground. He is huge, I confess that I cannot even push him out,” Cusin told Il Mattino daily.

“We are lucky to have Kyrylo on the team, he quite literally gives us an illegal advantage when he receives in the low post with his back to the basket. It is almost inevitable that he will attract the double team and we train so that we are able to feed him the ball in the best way possible.”

Nonetheless, when asked at a Thursday press conference what Avellino will need to in order to be competitive in Group B of the Basketball Champions League Fesenko diverted the focus away from himself and underlined their plurality of offensive options, sportavellino.it reported.

“In the Basketball Champions League we will face the same difficulty that we can run into in any competition,” Fesenko said. “There are good players and strong teams in the Basketball Champions League but we’re also a good team with good individual players.

“We don’t depend on one leader, pretty much any player on our roster can have a great night in a given game. On the other hand, if somebody is not hitting his shots on the day other players will step up and get into the spotlight to make up for it.

“I think we can definitely improve on defence, you can always play better on defence. I have been here only for a few weeks so I am still getting to know my team-mates and we still have a lot of margin to gel together. It is mainly a question of time, we have been working on our defensive drills, on our collective defence and we’ll see where that gets us.”