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Here is another new “off season” basketball series, that provides a lot of great information to our readers. Almost everybody that I speak to is “investing” money into bets - basketball bets! Read more »

Euroleague

One of the 50 greatest contributors to European club Basketball is the new head coach of the New York Knicks. No, not Dan “Coach” Peterson, who is a humourous commentator also on this list, but just not the new New York Knicks coach.

Euroleague.net describes Mike D’Antoni as “a charismatic playmaker with great court vision and leadership” - sounds like what people said about former Knicks coach Isiah Thomas, doesn’t it? All the best Mike, we just hope you don’t end up like this one day.

Oh well, we’ll see and we’re pretty sure that the Knicks will be a better team with Olimpia Milano star Mike D’Antoni.

One more interesting thing about the Euroleague-NBA-Milano connection, if any: On May 20th, we will officially know the 2008 NBA draft order. So maybe Danilo Gallinari of Olimipa Milano who declared himself to the NBA draft and is predicted to be a Top 10 draft pick, could be heading to New York…?

Euroleague Top16

We will do this until the end. After the great articles and predictions for the regular season and the Top16 we want to take a look how close our experts actually predicted the Top16.

Let’s start with the guys who actually predicted the Top16 team record 100% right - some of them for the second time now.

FC AXA Barcelona - not only qualified for the Top8 but with a record of 3 wins and 3 losses - they guy who knew it already befor the first Top16 game? Jaime Martinez Lafargue of the Spanish web site solobasket. Slowly but surely this guy gets scary. First he was right with Axa’s regular season record (9-5) and then he knew that they would go to the Top8 with a 3-3. Maybe we should start betting posts with Jaime?

Next 100% expert: Yarone Arbel. Although he was off 21% with Maccabi’s regular season he was totally right with their Top16 record: 4-2. I am already excited to see what Jaime for Axa and Yarone for Maccabi have to say about this top8 where the two 100% guys clash.

Another come back team: Olympiakos Piraeus - and Gallis from gallobasket knew it already. He told us that Olympiakos would end the top16 with a 4-2 record. One thing he was wrong with though: He did not believe they would make the Top8 - because of Real Madrid - well we know that story…

But it wasn’t just these to guys that were right with their prediction: Kerem Oktemus predicted a 3-3 for Fenerbahce - good job. Can’t wait to see if Kerem will go with Fenerbahce in the Top8 also - I mean Siena might be a tough opponent to beat?

What about the others? Like Final Four favorite Panathinaikos and CSKA? Julie Debove was close to getting it right again - he predicted a 5-1 record - well only one basket in Barcelona messed up his prediction.

We all know the Panathinaikos story by now … Doubleteam.gr told us that Panathinaikos would cruise to the Top8 with a 5-1. They cruised home from Belgrade with a huge loss and a final top16 record of 3-3. I promise - this will be the last sentence about Panathinaikos’ Euroleague season 07/08.

Next club - Lietuvos Rytas. Prediction guy - Christophe Ney. Keep in mind that this guy writes his thoughts about basketball games here on BallinEurope no a daily basis and was totally off with Rytas’ regular season prediction (64% wrong). So I was really hoping that he would be right in the top16 - I mean I don’t want our readers to run away because of him! So Christophe predicted a 4-2 for Rytas. I just can hope that our readers will stay and I am really happy that we won’t get another prediction from Christophe for the Top8!

What about Partizan Belgrade - the Cinderella story of the Euroleague this season. Well, David Hein did the predictions for them and was totally right during the regular season. Even in the Top16 he was close - he predicted a 3-3. But one thing makes his prediction worthless: Dusko Vujosevic’s team will lose those two then sweep the next three before losing to Panathinaikos in the final game of the group. Damn - I mentioned Panathinaikos already!

Next disappointment: Real Madrid, which will have the Final Four in town but without the cities team. Maybe a good chance to grab some Final Four tickets! Alberto from basket-net thought they might end up first of their group with a 4-2 record - sorry Alberto… You can give us your Final Four tickets if you want!

Jonas Miklovas (basketnews) and Zalgiris: I would say Zalgiris will go 2-4 in Top 16. Close call Jonas - at least you were right that they won’t make the Top8 which makes me sad since we really enjoyed you insight reports directly from the  Lithuanian arenas.

Last but not least we have to talk about Siena. Dario Marra (basketcentral), who I finally got to meet in Roma and actually is a Roma fan - and not Siena, told us that Siena would end up 3-3. They ended up 4-2 and led the group with Panathinaikos. I wonder if Dario will still stay a Roma fan or switch to Siena for the rest of the season.

Once again a big “thank you” to all the experts. Dario, Julien, Jaime, Gallis, Yarone, David, Kerem and Nacho of basketme will get an email from us today to let us know what they think about Siena’s, CSKA’s, AXA’s, Olympiakos’, Maccabi’s, Belgrade’s, Fenerbahce’s and Tau’s games in the top8. It might be hard for Jaime to still predict the perfect season for Axa!

ULEB Cup

Before I begin, I just want to again thank my basketball coaches at TCU. Their contracts were not renewed for next season, and they will no longer be coaching at TCU. Read more »