Victoria Libertas Pesaro

	Victoria Libertas Pesaro
Founded	1946
resolution	2005
Hall	Adriatic Arena ; (10,323 seats)
Homepage	www.victorialibertas.it
president	Ario Costa
General Director	Stefano Cioppi
Trainer	Giancarlo Sacco
league	Lega Basket Serie A ; 2017/18 : 15th place
Colours	Red White
home	Away
	successes
	Italian champion 1988, 1990 ; Italian cup winner 1985, 1992 ; European Cup Winners' Cup 1983 ; finalist European Cup Winners' Cup 1986, 1987 ; Korać Cup finalist 1990, 1992 ; semi-finalist 1991 European Cup Winners ' Cup

Victoria Libertas Pesaro is an Italian basketball club from Pesaro in the Marche region . The club had its most successful period during the 1980s and early 1990s. Home games are played by Victoria Libertas, whose club colors are red and white, in the 10,323-seat Adriatic Arena. The club is also known by the former sponsor name Scavolini Pesaro , under whose name the club played its games from 1975 to 2013.

history

Success until 1994

The association was originally founded in 1946 as Victoria Pesaro and merged with Libertas Pesaro in 1965 . Together they belonged to the top national league Serie A until 1974. In 1978 the promotion was successful and in 1980 the 19-year-old center Walter Magnifico was brought from Fortitudo Bologna , with whom the club subsequently celebrated the greatest successes. In 1981 they achieved fourth place after the regular season, the best placement ever. A year later, in 1982 they were even the first in the main round to enter the play-offs for the championship, but lost the final series against Olimpia Milano . As a runner-up you were allowed to take part in the European Cup Winners' Cup, as no national cup competition of its own was held at that time. The European cup competition was won in 1983 in the final against the French representative ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne . With the first club title for Victoria Libertas at all, they won the seventh Italian success in eight years in this competition. Then the Yugoslav Olympic champion and world champion Dragan Kićanović left the club after two seasons and they fell from the top of the table in the 1983/84 season, before entering the next season 1984/85 with just eighth place after the main round Play-offs reached. While they won the reintroduced cup competition and thus won their first national title, they beat the main round first Virtus Roma in the first round of the play-offs and moved back into the final series. For the third time in a row they lost a play-off series against Olimpia Milano.

In the following season 1985/86 they moved back to the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup, which they lost to defending champions FC Barcelona . They also lost the national cup final in 1986, as in the following year, against their feared opponent Olimpia Milano, who was also the final destination in the play-off quarter-finals of the 1987 championship. The final of the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1987 was lost against the Croatian representative KK Cibona , who signed Aleksandar Petrović , the older brother of Dražen Petrović , for the following season . In 1988 they won the final series of the national championship as fifth in the main round against Olimpia Milano, who had previously defended their title in the European Cup , and Magnifico was able to triumph over his national team-mate Dino Meneghin for the first time . Scavolini, the sponsor's name since 1975, missed the Final Four tournament in the subsequent European Champion Clubs' Cup , which was unusual for an Italian champion in the 1970s and 1980s. Also in the national championship they were eliminated as the main round first and defending champion in the semi-final series against Milan, who took back the championship title.

However, Milan stumbled in the 1989/90 season and Scavolini lost only one play-off game as the first in the main round and won the championship back. In the Korać Cup , the third European club competition, they reached the final games in 1990, which were lost to the Catalan club Joventut de Badalona . In the following European Champion Clubs' Cup in 1991 they reached the "Final Four", but lost one after the other against defending champion POP 84 Split and against the Israeli series champion Maccabi Tel Aviv and took fourth place. While Milan regained strength in the national championship in 1991 and occupied the first place in the table after the main round, Pesaro bobbed into the play-offs in seventh place, in which they were eliminated in the quarter-finals as defending champions against eventual champions Juventus Caserta . In the following season 1991/92 the championship season 1989/90 seemed to repeat itself. While you lost the Korać Cup finals again, this time against the national competitor Virtus Roma, you remained unbeaten as the first in the main round in the play-offs until the second final game. After you had won the first final game, you lost the remaining three final games against the new champions Benetton Treviso , against which you had previously won the final in the national cup competition. Treviso had signed Toni Kukoč from the national champion cup winner Split for this season and was trained with Petar Skansi by a former Pesaros player.

In the following season 1992/93 they defeated feared opponents Milan in the quarterfinals as the main round, but lost the semifinals against defending champions Treviso, against whom they also lost in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Euroliga, which had replaced the national championship competition and several national ones Representatives were qualified. In the following season you could reach second place in the main round and also moved into the final series against defending champion Virtus Bologna , against whom you were defeated in five games.

Relegation and bankruptcy (1994 to 2005)

In the seasons 1994/95 and 1995/96 Scavolini retired as the main round seventh in the play-off quarter-finals of the championship. Then Magnifico and Antonello Riva left the team and in the 1996/97 season they could only just avoid slipping to the relegation places with just one win ahead. In the following season 1997/98 it happened; a win was missing to stay in the league and Pesaro was relegated to Serie A2. After relegation, Magnifico returned to Scavolini for three years at the age of 37. In the A2 series the promotion was not successful, instead they took over the license from Pallacanestro Gorizia for the 1999/2000 season and thus managed to return to the top division. In the regular season convincing fourth in the comeback in the upper house, they met in the play-off round of 16 on the thirteenth Olimpia Milano, against whom they were eliminated as in the play-offs of the 1980s. In the following season they even moved into the play-offs as second, but could only prevail in five games against the seventh Snaidero Udine and lost the semi-final series in three games against defending champion Fortitudo Bologna . After a quarter-final in 2002 against defending champion Virtus Bologna, they slipped out of the play-off ranks in 2003. In 2004 they reached a fourth place in the main round and lost the semi-final series smoothly against the future series champion Montepaschi Siena , who then celebrated his first championship success. In the final table of the 2004/05 season they reached ninth place, but then had to file for bankruptcy of the game operating company and return the license.

New start (since 2005)

In Serie B, local rivals Falco Pesaro were taken over in 2005 and the now 34-year-old Carlton Myers , who had terminated his contract with CB Valladolid in Spain after the start of the season , returned to Pesaro after an eleven-year break and helped with the restart. As second in the table they rose to the Legadue , which had replaced the A2 series. As the main round fifth in the 2006/07 season, they won the elimination games for promotion to Serie A with only one play-off defeat and returned to the top division again. In the promotion season 2007/08 you missed due to the direct comparison the entry into the play-offs for the championship. In the following season 2008/09, however, this decided in favor of Scavolini and as the main round eight they were eliminated in the first round against defending champion Siena. Myers then left Pesaro again. While they returned to the European stage as eighth in the table and reached the Final Four tournament in Göttingen in the EuroChallenge 2009/10 , in which they lost both games and finished fourth, they missed entry into the Play- offs the national championship. In the 2011/12 championship, however, with sixth place in the table after the regular season, the leap among the top eight teams succeeded again. The play-off semi-finals were again the final destination against Milan.