| Scavolini Siviglia Pesaro | ||||
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| Nickname | VL Vuelle |
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| Leagues | Lega Basket Serie A | |||
| Founded | 1946 | |||
| History | Victoria Libertas Pesaro (1946-present) |
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| Arena | ADRIATIC Arena (capacity: 10,323) |
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| Location | Pesaro, Italy | |||
| Team colors | Red and White |
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| President | Stefano Vellucci | |||
| Head coach | Luca Dal Monte | |||
| Championships | Italian Championships (2): 1988, 1990 Italian Cups (2): 1985, 1992 Saporta Cups (1): 1983 |
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| Website | Official Site | |||
| Uniforms | ||||
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Victoria Libertas (also known as "VL" or in Italian Vuelle), full name Unione Sportiva Victoria Libertas Pallacanestro, is a professional basketball team that is based in Pesaro, Italy. The club competes in the top level Italian professional basketball league, the Lega Basket Serie A. It is commonly known across Europe as Scavolini Pesaro, from the name of its main sponsor Scavolini, an Italian kitchen designer and manufacturer, whose co-founder Valter Scavolini was formerly club president. For past club sponsorship names, see the list below.
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Victoria Libertas was officially founded in 1946 and had its best seasons during the 1980s. After being among the top teams in Italy for decades, Victoria Libertas won its first important trophy in 1983 (European Cup Winners' Cup). Since then, Italian League was won twice (in 1988 and 1990), and the Italian Cup was also won twice (in 1985 and 1992).
In recent years, Victoria Libertas was among the best European teams, having played the Euroleague in 2001-02 and 2004-05 seasons. In 2004-05 it unexpectedly got to the Euroleague Top-8, being defeated in the quarter finals by eventual champion Maccabi Tel Aviv. Furthermore, Victoria Libertas shooting guard, Charles Smith, was honored with the first-ever Euroleague's Alphonso Ford Top Scorer Trophy,[1] named after the late Euroleague scoring champ who died in 2004 and who was replaced in Victoria Libertas by Smith himself.
In July 2005, as a consequence of the poor administration of the previous two seasons, Victoria Libertas failed to remain within the parameters required to join the Italian Basketball League and wound up. Pesaro's second team, Falco Spar, agreed with former Victoria Libertas president Valter Scavolini to join forces to invest in a team to bring back Victoria Libertas to Italian First Division (Lega Basket Serie A).
The new team, named Scavolini Gruppo Spar (or simply Scavolini-Spar), played the 2005-06 season in the Italian Third Division (B1). Owners' target resulted in Scavolini-Spar having large amounts of money at its disposal compared with the other teams of the league. Players from the upper divisions were enrolled, star Carlton Myers among them, which lead the team to win the league and gain promotion to the Second Division (LegaDue).
In 2006-07 Scavolini-Spar won the LegaDue playoff series, lining up players such as Carlton Myers, Rodney White (9th overall pick of the 2001 NBA Draft), Mindaugas Žukauskas (captain of the Lithuanian national basketball team) and Michael Hicks (Panamian national team star). The team was therefore promoted, for the second straight year, to play the Lega Basket Serie A 2007-08 league.
Following the 2009–10 season, Spar's secondary sponsorship contract expired. The club picked up a new secondary sponsor in Italian clothing company Siviglia, theriby changing its full sponsored name to Scavolini Siviglia Style Pesaro (more simply Scavolini Siviglia Pesaro).
In 1996 Victoria Libertas moved from the historic "hangar" arena into the new BPA Palas arena (today: ADRIATIC Arena) which now hosts its home games. Drawing large audiences from nearby towns and the whole Marche region, in mid 2000s Victoria Libertas was among the top ten basketball teams in Europe for average attendance.
|14 | |Simone Flamini |Power forward
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In the past, due to sponsorship deals, it has also been known as:[2]
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