With a great performance from Marquinhos, Flamengo won another NBB match. On Saturday afternoon (January 5th), at the Tijuca Tennis Club gymnasium, Flamengo defeated the home team 94-70, tying the record for the best start to a season with eight consecutive victories. Next Thursday, in addition to maintaining the championship lead, the team can surpass Brasília from the 2009/2010 season with a victory against Joinville.

"The consistency we've shown on the court has been a huge advantage for Flamengo. We're prepared for a variety of tactical situations and are able to bring what we train daily into the game," Neto said.

"Today against Tijuca, which has a player like César, with a higher volume of play, we opted to use the strategy of making a substitution on him, which worked. We managed to reduce this player's score and take advantage of this situation to win," added the coach, who also had another reinforcement in the stands: in addition to the red-and-black fans, who were present at the Tijuca gym, winger Marcelinho Machado supported his teammates for the first time since undergoing surgery.

"Marcelo is part of the team. Unfortunately, he can't be part of it on the court yet. The fact that he's with us after being injured is very motivating. Having him close to the team helps give the players more confidence and motivate the team. He can't be the captain on the scoresheet, for obvious reasons, but everyone respects him as a leader, and that's something I think will be hard to lose," says Neto.

 

For the Flamengo idol, after going through the first phase of recovery, which he declared to be the most difficult, the time has come to "channel this desire to return to playing, into the challenge of being patient and investing his energy in the recovery process." For the player, "it's good to achieve a record, but even better is to break it," referring to his streak of eight consecutive wins. 

It is with this philosophy that Flamengo intends to continue its 100% success rate in the NBB. 

"This mark is good just for the record, because we can't be satisfied with just eight wins. This is good to confirm a good moment, and that this good moment lasts longer than just eight wins. The idea is for us to have a good championship, and we have tough games ahead. This championship is very difficult and having started like this is very important for us to take another step and be able to visualize the objective set at the beginning," concludes the Flamengo coach.

Other standouts for Flamengo this Saturday were Marquinhos, who finished the match as the day's top scorer with 24 points, and Olivinha, who finished the day with a double-double with 16 points and 12 rebounds. Flamengo returns to the court for the first round of the NBB next Thursday, January 10, against Joinville, at 20 pm at the Tijuca Tênis Clube gymnasium.