
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.




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.

