Copa Del Rey 27
February Madness, Copa del Rey-style
“February Madness” begins this week in Europe, with a number of top domestic leagues hosting national cup tournaments; probably tops in pageantry and hype on The Continent is Spain’s Copa del Rey, a hoops bloodbath since 1984. BallinEurope this morning provides a few links, clips and whatnot in preparation for what they just had to […]
Top 100 Teams in Europe: Pre-Cups Running Over Edition
As most European domestic leagues are taking a break for a week or two for national cup and/or all-star festivities, BallinEurope crunches the numbers again to determine where the Continent’s finest stand. Near the top, Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Euroleague-side punishment of Union Olimpija shook things up a bit within the top 10 and Olympiacos reasserted […]
Top 10 reasons Americans should watch the ACB finals
Yes, yes, BallinEurope realizes that U.S. basketball fandom is currently enraptured with the NBA Championship, if only to determine just which team y’all hate more. But still: A true roundball supporter wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to tune into some top-level ball, would you? As Pete Mickeal once put it, “Hey, there’s a world outside […]
The ACB point guard of the year is … c'mon, like you don't know
Yet another anticlimactic accolade has been bestowed upon Ricky Rubio for the 2009-10 season, as Spain’s ACB League yesterday officially crowned The Human YouTube Clip/defending back-to-back FIBA Europe Young Player of the Year as Point Guard of the Year. It’s the second such nod for Rubio, who also received the award for the 2007-08 season […]
Everything you've always wanted to know about Barcelona vs. Unicaja (in English)
On Saturday, perhaps the marquee matchup on the ACB slate – if for historical significance only – will be the FC Barcelona vs. Unicaja match. The league’s official website has quite the extensive collection of facts ‘n’ figures about this match and the 15-year record of meetings between these two clubs, of which BallinEurope attempted […]
¡Barcelona vs. Madrid today! ¡Rubio! ¡Llull! ¡Navarro! ¡Pete Mickael! ¡Ante Tomic! ¡ACB playoff positioning at stake! ¡Messina’s nightmare continues!
“It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse.” – Tom Cruise as Vincent Lauria, The Color of Money “I’ll be back.” – Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger, any number of movies Here they come again: For the eighth time this season, Real Madrid attempts to defeat the beast that is 2009-10 […]
Madrid breaks through, beats Barça, creates blueprint?
Thanks to their powerful standings in European basketball, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid were guaranteed to meet at least six times in 2009-10 going into last night’s Euroleague quarterfinals game; today, that number is seven, as Madrid handed Barça a 70-63 loss, its biggest of the season thus far.
The Frank Euroleague roundup: Top 16 finales
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 […]
Copa del Rey: The documentary
Drop whatever you’re doing – when you have about 25 minutes free, that is – and head on over to the ACB’s official website for a sweet little mini-documentary on all the pageantry and play from this year’s Copa del Rey, perhaps the most exciting cup tournament in European domestic league hoops. The Copa del […]
The 2010 Copa del Rey: The YouTube recap
Congratulations this morning go out to Regal FC Barcelona, as the Blaugrana reaffirmed its dominant status in 2009-10 with a crushing 80-61 victory over Real Madrid. What’s that? You say you missed out on the pageantry and action of Europe’s most exciting cup? Not surprising, seeing as how little coverage events like Copa del Rey […]
Best of the (basketball) net: Happy Birthday, Charles edition
Ball in Europe will be rounding up this weekend’s European cup action tomorrow, but for today here are a handful of stories from the interwebs this week about every other subject in a seven-day span spent mostly between deprogramming from NBA All-Star Weekend and preparing for the Copa del Rey. • The best post of […]
State of the nations: European basketball organizations today
While not interested in passing definitive judgment, we think it would be useful and fair to take a look at the European basketball panorama. There will be no ratings or rankings here, just a snapshot of what the most important ballin’ countries offer us. Ten years into the third millennium, it’s common to hear repeated […]