Ball in Europe – European Basketball Blog

It’s official: 18-year-old American phenom Jeremy Tyler has washed out with Israeli club Maccabi Haifa but will stay in Europe next season to further his career and heighten his currently well-low standing on 2011 NBA Draft boards.

Tyler, as you may recall (funny how the early hype machine mysteriously went really silent for a long time there), was the prospective senior-year high school student in San Diego forewent his final year of schooling to pay professional ball in Europe. With some assistance from Sonny Vaccaro, he who helped orchestrate Brandon Jennings’ stint with Lottomatica Roma, Tyler managed to score a one-year, $140,000 deal from BSL team Maccabi Haifa.

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They’re breaking out the superlatives today over at the ACB’s official website, full in the afterglow of a weekend’s worth of mostly tight games or, as writer Malo de Molina put it, “¡Qué jornada!”

When the dust settled, Real Madrid (20-5) had beaten fourth-place Valencia (16-9) and wrested second place from slipping Caja Laboral Baskonia (20-5), who suffered a shocking 74-58 loss to no. 6 Asefa Estudiantes (13-12).

Cajasol (ranked 5th, 15-10) and giant-killers Gran Canaria 2014 (8th, 12-13) continued their upward trend with wins over Valladolid (10th, 11-14) and Suzuki Manresa (11th, 11-14), respectively. Xacobeo Blu:sens (17th, 8-17) and DKV Joventut (9th, 12-13) managed to snap losing streaks, the latter scoring its first win under coach Pepu Hernandez.

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With the NCAA basketball tournament field of 65 now set, Lithuania-based Basket News is taking pride today in a trio of countrymen participating in the tourney. Representing the yellow, green and red in March Madness will be:

• Deividas Dulkys, Florida State University. The sophomore formerly of Findlay College Prep managed 8.5 points and 2.4 boards per game while shooting with 39.4% success beyond the arc coming off the bench.

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Look out, upcoming Olympiacos opponents: Big Sofo is just starting to heat up. After a marginal season in Euroleague play up in the early going (BiE is blaming it on that H1N1 the big man contracted in the autumn), Sofoklis Schortsanitis turned in his peak Euroleague performance of 2009-10 a week and a half ago, going for 19 points in just 18 minutes of playing time (read: “time spent dominating the paint”) against helpless Baskonia.

This weekend, the Red chased up his humdrum 2-of-6 showing in the BC Khimki game by taking the ESAKE All-Star Game MVP award with statistics insane even for such an exhibition: Would you believe 42 points of 19-of-21 shooting, including 3-of-5 on threes and a perfect 16-of-16 from within the arc?

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It’s not that BallinEurope is obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota, but … all right, i am obsessed with both Bill Simmons and Rubio-to-Minnesota. Still, when BiE finally got around to reading this week’s patented “Mailbag” column only to see no. 1 best-selling author The Sports Guy take an incorrect swipe at the poster boy for European basketball’s future on the international stage, well, BiE had to come to the defense of Rubio, especially since the sparring partner in this debate will never actually see this column, heh heh.

The topic was, as stated, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ future. A frustrated fan sought empathy from Simmons in a pleading email that dissected a bit of the infamous 50% season-ticket discount the Wolves are pitching which BiE had a look at last week.

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Coach Ivanovic may now exhale

Better late than never (totally BiE’s fault, let me tell you) comes Ball in Europe’s dispatch from Francesco Cappelletti rounding up the week that was in Euroleague basketball. For your amusement and edification, Francesco discusses, among other topics, the Terrell McIntyre Backup Curse, which teams should sweep into the Final Four, why Maccabi Tel Aviv is so good in 2009-10 and why Cibona Zagreb should be awesome in 2010-11.

Thrilling night
When a Bojan Bogdanovic-less Cibona Zagreb was up 72-58 with three minutes to go, Caja Laboral’s nightmare was very close to become reality. Then, a 17-2 run handled by Marcelinho Huertas turned the lights out for an overtime everyone knew would not be balanced at all. Baskonia scored 24 points in five minutes to ensure a gap BC Khimki couldn’t fill. With radio and voices running, the 22 point-margin BC Khimki had over Olympiacos to begin the fourth quarter, eventually becoming a 96-83 final score, was insufficient to reach second place in Group H.

Dusko Ivanovic can breathe again now, as his team qualified for the playoffs. But we have to thank Cibona, which was able to play their game even after elimination, just for the love of the game.

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Mentally battered and otherwise worked over since this morning’s 4am True Hoop live blogging, BallinEurope nevertheless wanted to post *something* with which the loyal readers might waste some time on Saturday.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, the token YouTube video highlight collection post of the day.

The Euroleague Top 10 Plays of the Week clip was again dutifully uploaded onto the ‘Tube and so runs below the break. Is Ricky in it? Yes, and Pops is, too, plus an awesome Viktor Khyrapa block that BiE *knew* would be in here as soon as it happened, awesome three-way passing work by Partizan, and Linas Kleiza creating one of the greatest highlights off a missed free throw ever.

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The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream yesterday announced they’d acquired the rights to BallinEurope fave Team Hungary/MiZo Pécs guard Dalma Iványi from the San Antonio Silver Stars for center Michelle Snow.

Iványi is currently good for a line of 11.1 points, 3.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game in the Hungarian league; in 13 games’ worth of Euroleague Women play, she was good for 7.6 ppg and a sliver under 7.5 rpg. Iványi really crashed the sports headlines last week when she went for a triple-double of 24/11/10 against EL final four team Wisla Can-Pack.

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A few in-house items to announce to readers this morning:

• First, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Yes, there will be prizes for the winners of the BallinEurope Invitational Challenge. An honorary gold medal today – no, that’s *not* the prize; i haven’t decided what the prize is yet – goes to Radallo. Radallo’s BAZ_&_MEZ outdid Meet The Boss’ well-publicized risk-taking lineup in the last week by a score of 173.2-150.8 and thus widened his lead atop the table.

"Basketball" by John Robertson

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Pops!

Apparently, however, no one told the Muscovite home crowd, who were as stoked for this contest as any game that truly “counts.” And one CSKA player in particular didn’t get the memo.

The highlight clip runs below the break. Some nice shock-and-awe moments to look out for include an awesome block by Viktor Khryapa at 0.30 or so to stifle a fast-break opportunity and Travis Watson’s open JAM for one of Kaunas’ last gasps at 0.54, but the show was stolen by that guy wearing only POPS on his jersey’s back: See the sweet alley oop finished off at about 1.08, Mensah-Bonsu throwing it down again just (YouTube-measured) a few seconds later, and the serious poster shot on the breakaway at about 2.03. Oh, and a “not in my дом” block at about 2.23.

Final score: CSKA 84, Zalgiris 71. Mensah-Bonsu’s final line: 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting, eight rebounds and an index ranking of 23. And onto the final eight marches the Red Army…

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