Coach of the month – Korisliiga (men) – October 2024
Why not, let’s also give some recognition to the coaches at the end of the bench!
Which coach had the ‘best’ month out of the 12 Korisliiga teams in October?
Like in the Player of the Month category, for me, two names stood out in this field. Unlike in the player category, I would accept a 50/50 stats line for the team for the coach to be considered for the Coach of the Month award, and also I do look at what is ‘expected’ (in my view) from the team when deciding this.
Sorry – don’t have any great stats or formula to calculate this …
So let’s look at the coaches – some would say that Vesa Vertio of Seagulls, Janne Koskimies of KarhuBasket or Jussi Savolainen of Salon Vilpas would have a shout at this? For me – those teams performed ‘as expected’ or thereabouts in October, so stepped past them quite fast. Aapo Heinonen of Tapiolan Honka was the early front runner for this, after Honka started the season superbly – but three defeats in a row lowered his stock in the running.
That left me with two names to look at : Petri Virtanen of KatajaBasket and Konsta Mastomäki of Bisons – and really, either of these would be worthy of the Coach of the Month. Mastomäki has gotten Bisons to a great start this year and a 4-2 record for the opening month tells that story rather well. Also being relatively young and newcomer in a way.. these really were points in the bag when considering him. Virtanen on the other hand, apart from the horror-show in Helsinki – took his team to the top of the league after six games played with a 5-1 record (albeit it being only with having a 4 point better score difference than Karhu 😉 ). Plus I do like teams that score a lot of points.. and Kataja scored over 90 in three games and over 100 in two.. so I rest my case.
I could toss a coin to make the choice.. but I will go with the league table with this one.
COACH OF THE MONTH FOR KORISLIIGA (men) for OCTOBER 2024 :
PETRI VIRTANEN of KATAJABASKET !!
Kataja Basket in October 2024 :
- Pyrintö – Kataja 66-100
- Kataja – BC Nokia 92-74
- Seagulls-Kataja 105-78
- Kataja – Kobrat 91-79
- Honka – Kataja 92-95
- Kataja-KTP 107-94
