Trailing in their respective best-of-five semifinal series, Savino Del Bene Scandicci and Igor Gorgonzola Novara return home this weekend determined to level the playing field in the race for a spot in Finals of the 2024-2025 Lega Volley Femminile Serie A1 Tigotà.

Novara will get on the court first, hosting defending champions Prosecco Doc Imoco Conegliano at the Pala Igor Gorgonzola on Saturday, at 17:00 local time (16:00 GMT), while Scandicci will count on the support of their home fans at the Pallazo Wanny, in Firenze, to face Milano on Sunday, at 20:30 (19:30 GMT).

• Watch the Lega Volley Femminile Serie A1 Tigotà playoffs live on VBTV

Losing to Milano in straight sets last weekend in the opening match of the series was somewhat of a shock to Scandicci because the three previous encounters held in 2024-2025 had needed five sets to be decided. Head coach Marco Gaspari wants his team to learn from that match to make adjustments and deliver a stronger performance in front of their home fans.

“Each match will be different and will offer us an opportunity to do better and to do it, we need to take advantage of the good and the bad things we did,” he said. “Milano had an excellent match last week, they were very good with their offense, their blocking and mainly their defense. We need to be willing to take more risks, especially on offense and with our serving. It’s going to be a long series and a lot can happen, but we need to always focus on the next match.”

For Milano, match two offers an opportunity for them to take another step towards the Scudetto Finals. If they manage to keep the great form and secure another win, Milano will have not one, but two chances to bring the series to an end in front of their home fans as they would host matches three and five of the series.

“We need to leave match one behind us as it starts all over and Scandicci will certainly try to make the most of their homecourt advantage,” head coach Stefano Lavarini reacted. “They will push hard, so we need to be able to handle it and have been working on the aspects of our game that we can control. I continue to expect this series to be very competitive and the team that gets to remain more consistent will probably prevail in the end.”

Lega Volley Femmnilie – Match Schedule & Results

Novara try to repeat last season

Needing to accomplish the difficult task of taking down the undefeated Conegliano, Novara can find inspiration from within as last year, after losing the first match of the best-of-three semifinal series between the teams, they managed to return home and take the defending champions down, leveling the duel. The team gets to the second match of the series motivated by their 3-1 victory over Romania’s Alba Blaj on Tuesday, in the first leg of the CEV Cup Finals.

“We want to do better than in the first match,” middle blocker Federica Squarcini commented. “We definitely recognize Conegliano’s strength, but going down without a fight is certainly nothing like us. Our morale is high after the victory in the CEV Cup Finals and we know our stadium is going to be packed again, which is exciting. The fans will be on our side, but we’ll need to do everything we can to make the series longer.”

For Conegliano, the expectations are that the team gets to deliver an even stronger performance on Saturday after having a full week to prepare for the second match of the series.

“This is kind of new for us,” head coach Daniele Santarelli revealed. “We typically have European competition matches to worry about, but this time Novara were the ones playing midweek, which could give us a little bit of an edge as we had more time to prepare and manage our energy level. I expect match two to be entirely different. They will do everything to play at their best and they can be very dangerous when they do it, but we know we can also create problems for them if we are at our best, so that’s what we’ll try to do.”

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