After last night’s games, the teams of each group played against each other. We all had our favorites with Panathinaikos, CSKA, Real Madrid and maybe Tau Ceramica.
Let’s see what really happened:
The only team without a win is Aris TT Bank from Greece in group E which is lead by Tau Ceramica who has not lost a game so far. The bad thing for Aris – they haven’t even come close to win a game. They lost to Fenerbahce by 8, to Rytas by 15 and to Tau Ceramica by 18! Won’t be easy for head coach Herbert Gordon to not get eliminated in the Top16.
So besides Tau Ceramica there is another team that has not lost a game so far – Montepaschi Siena. Siena won on Wednesday against a weak looking Euroleague champion – Panathinaikos Athens. I think Panathinaikos should change the stragety pretty soon – it does not work anymore to give Sarunas or Spanoulis the ball, make Batiste set a pick and penetrate to the basket. Spanoulis got blocked like 200 times against Siena and they lost the game. The next game for Siena will lead them to Belgrade, the team Siena won by as much as 17 points. So if Siena’s Americans don’t refuse to go to Belgrade it should be an easy win for Siena. Right now Siena sits on top of group D with Panathinaikos being last.
So what about Real Madrid who is in group F with Maccabi, Zalgiris and Olympiakos? Not much – the group is led by Maccabi – the team without their star Marcus Fizer. Nobody, including me, really thought that Maccabi will have a chance against Real Madrid and they proved us wrong – really wrong. In a blow out they won against Real Madrid by as much as 19 points last night.
Besides being last in that group there is still good news for Olympiakos: They have a better record than Panathinaikos – at least concerning the points. (-16 for Olympiakos and -17 for Panathinaikos.)
In group G it is also not the favorite leading the group. CSKA Moscow got the same record as Barcelona and even beat them in Moscow but Bacrelona leads by 14 total points against CSKA’s 13 total points. Lottomatica kind of killed their chances to go to the Top8 last night by losing against Barcelona by 29 points. Barcelona was up 30-11 after the first quarter – nobody really expected Roma to come back after this.
But well – it is just halftime and in the following weeks everything can change again – besides Aris – I really count them out.
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