FIBA EuroChallenge 2011-12 25
List of European champions, 2011-12: Final edition
Last week saw the final game in a handful of major European domestic basketball leagues – including Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Serbia – and so BallinEurope offers the final and complete roundup of this year’s champions. And it seems like the season just began … ah, well, onto the 2012 Olympics! (Incidentally, conclusion of […]
Besiktas 80, Anadolu Efes 76: The BallinEurope review of a triple-crown season
Congratulations go out from BallinEurope to Beşiktaş Milangaz, who capped a fascinating whirlwind run last night with an 80-76 victory over Anadolu Efes in game six of the TBL championship series. The Black Eagles may add the trophy to their Turkish Cup and FIBA Eurochallenge title in 2011-12, certainly the most successful – and among […]
List of European champions, 2011-12: Future nearly upon us edition
While Spain, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy and Serbia have yet to crown this season’s basketball champions, most other domestic leagues have, thus allowing us to visualize the makeups of the 2012-13 Euroleague, Adriatic League and (kinda sorta) Eurocup. Newly welcome champions to the BallinEurope include those from Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina (with some disheartening financial […]
Pops the tops: Mensah-Bonsu leads Besiktas to win, produces fantastic highlight clips
Now that leagues are heading into their championship homestretch, the crème de la crème in Europe is tending to rise to the top – perhaps none more so than BallinEurope fave Pops Mensah-Bonsu. (And yeah, BiE has heard of that Vassilis Spanoulis guy, but run with yet for a moment.) Not only did Pops earn […]
Euroleague 2012-13: An attempt to deduce the composition (plus Official Fearless Prediction™)
Yesterday, the basketball-centered bit of the Twitter universe was centered in two real-life locales: New York City and Barcelona. Topics in play were the falling of ping-pong balls in New York City and Euroleague’s incipient decision on the construction of Euroleague 2012-13. Hopefully, BallinEurope will get something together on the former later, but for now, […]
List of European champions, 2011-12: End of May update edition
Basketball grinds on in Europe’s three dozen or so domestic leagues and so BallinEurope today updates the “List of European Champions” page. Since last posting, new champs have been crowned in Israel (guess who), Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Holland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania. Things are progressing meanwhile in Europe’s larger leagues including Spain, Greece, […]
List of European champions, 2011-12: First edition
BallinEurope is officially back from his post-Euroleague Final Four vacation (hey, you can’t blame BiE for enjoying Istanbul for a couple extra days after wall-to-wall b-ball reportage)! How to prove it? Well, here’s this year’s first traditional “List of European champions.” Below runs news on domestic and pan-European champions from across the Continent – from […]
The EuroChallenge Championship Curse: What of Beşiktaş’ future?
In this second piece of a two-part series, sportswriter/commentator Uygar Karaca again considers the EuroChallenge Championship Curse, with special reference to this year’s champions, Beşiktaş; unfortunately for the Eagles, Karaca feels a distressing amount of déjà vu… In this article, I will try to answer the question as to whether Beşiktaş Milangaz fits into the […]
Revealed: The EuroChallenge championship curse
Winning the EuroChallenge title is a good thing, right? After all, it’s typically the first Continental trophy to display on the mantelpiece and the champions label wins the club to right to play in the more prestigious (and more big-bucks) Eurocup competition the following season. Well, Uygar Karaca may convince believers otherwise. In the first […]
FIBA EuroChallenge: Mensah-Bonsu, Erceg, Arroyo lead Beşiktaş to 91-86 win, championship title
Congratulations go out from BallinEurope to Beşiktaş Milangaz, winners of the 2011-12 FIBA EuroChallenge title with a 91-86 victory over Elan Chalon last night. The win represents not only advancement to Eurocup play for 2012-13, but also Turkey’s second-ever European club championship: An Efes Pilsen side led by Conrad McRae, Petar Naumoski and Ufuk Sarıca […]
Bundesliga roundup: Bayern Munchen snaps road losing streak; Artland Dragons slain; Tibor Pleiss, Brose Baskets put on show for OK City Thunder scouts
From the land of Dirk – Nowitzki and Bauermann, that is – David Hein reports on a few happenings in Germany’s top division of basketball. Read on to find out about Bayern Munich’s win on the road (finally); Artland Dragons’ ignominious first quarter against Ratiopharm Ulm; and Tibor Pleiß’ performance for Oklahoma City Thunder scouts. […]
Besiktas’ future so bright, Pops has to wear shades
Check out the fashion Team Britain’s Pops Mensah-Bonsu sported in a Eurochallenge game for Beşiktaş Milangaz against BK Pardubice. Perhaps Pops forgot his Abdul-Jabbar goggles or there was a problem with the lighting … in any case, the Eagles won the game, 78-70, for its seventh consecutive victory in the competition. As a tweet from […]