Before the last day of the regular season of the Euroleague, a few teams have already finished their season as they can not qualify anymore for the Top16. On the other hand, the race for this Top16 is as close as never with three groups still undecided. BallinEurope takes a look at the situation and tells you who will advance and why.
Group A is the only group which is decided already. Air Avellino and Le Mans are out while Cibona Zagreb clinched the Top16 spot with a emphatic beginning of the season. While Air Avellino did what could have been expected, the last place of Le Mans is particularly disappointing. After recruiting heavily this summer (Dee Spencer, David Bluthenthal, Brian Chase, JP Batista,…), the team of the Rookie head coach J.D. Jackson were the team that probably lost the most close games of the season. The blowouts only started on Gameday six with the huge home defeat against a injury-reduced Unicaja Malaga team. Beforehand, Le Mans lost their five first games with an average of only 4.2 points. These disappointing results are heavily commented in the French press that goes as far as pointing out to David Bluthenthal as the cause of the problems. BasketNews quotes the president of Le Mans with the following words about Bluthenthal: Today, David is not able to be the leader of a team. That’s it. We have done an error. (…) It looks like his talent is not good enough, maybe he has underestimated the French league. J.D. Jackson is not coming with better words for his star forward: For Bluthenthal, Le Mans is like a toy, and he is tired of playing with…
Group B gives us the most improbable finish, a situation that nobody really imagined before the season. But the financial trouble of Zalgiris Kaunas and the poor quality of the rosters from Prokom and Nancy have as consequence that one of these three teams is able to qualify for the next round. While Prokom has the best chances to advance, the are at the top of the three-team tiebreaker, the surprise may come from Nancy as SLUC is the only of the three team receiving their opponents while Zalgiris and Prokom have to travel to Barcelona and Athens. Seeing Nancy reaching the Top16 is kind of incredible after such horrible performances by the French team like 29 point defeat in… Prokom. So who do we see in the next round, the Good, the Bad or the Ugly?
In Group C, ALBA Berlin has everything in their own hands to qualify for the Top16 as the hosts of the Final Four will play the decisive game in their home arena O2 World. And while the fans are battling for the last tickets (about 1000 of the 14000 seats are still available) for Thursday’s game, the team needs to prepare without their head coach Luka Pavicevic who had to leave Berlin as his mother died. The Serbian coach will only be back in Berlin on Tuesday after assisting to the funeral. Additionally, with the loss against EWE Baskets Oldenburg, the team is probably not in its best mood before meeting the team that had its sole Euroleague win against… ALBA Berlin. On the other hand, this game-day may also be the last possibility to see Ricky Rubio play a Euroleague game. The Spanish team is barely without any chance to qualify for the Top16 (a win in Vitoria with a combined defeat of ALBA at home) and with the possibility of Rubio declaring for the NBA Draft this summer, it may be the premature ending of Ricky’s Euroleague days. However, the chance that Joventut qualifies for the next round is far lower than Ricky going for the Draft this year already and so we might see him back next season. And ALBA is most likely to discover a new area…
Group D finally is toughest to predict. With four teams still able to qualify for the Top16 and a difficult combination of games, nearly every possibility of ranking from 2 to 6 is possible. The hardest task has of course Partizan Belgrade as the Serbian team travels to Moscow. But even a loss in Russia does not mean elimination as we could have at the end a situation with a four team tiebreaker in the case of a Panionios Athens win at home over AJ Milano. And here, the difference of the last games will of course count and I am not able to predict this outcome.
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