BiE already submitted a Euroleague tournament bracket, but while a chance remains to put forth a few Official BallinEurope Fearless Predictions™ on the EL playoff round, well, BiE’ll take it.
Over at Euro-Step, this writer takes part in the regular “Wiseman Know” column (I know, I know) along with the likes of former EL title-winner Tomas van den Spiegel, Slovenian head coach Luka Bassin, BallinEurope.com pilgrim father Christophe Ney and Euroleague Adventures’ irrepressible Nick Gibson, among others. This week’s assignment for each of us wise guys was to predict the outcome of the four best-of-five EL playoff series – at Twitter-sized length, naturally. The remainder of the prognostications may be found here, while BiE’s run below.
(Incidentally, before the scoffing begins, please note that all four of the teams picked way back in October by BallinEurope to make the Final Four round are still alive – though the Panathinaikos-Maccabi series will take at least one out…)
FC Barcelona vs. Unics Kazan – Kazan’s had a nice run, but no one’s stopping this Blaugrana side yet. FC Barcelona, 3 games to 0.
Panathinaikos vs. Maccabi Tel Aviv – What a matchup of starting 5s, coaching, history … a grind-it-out series goes to the last bucket in game 5. PAO, 3-2.
CSKA Moscow vs. Gescrap Bilbao Basket – Bilbao’s had a nice run, but no one’s stopping this Big Red Machine yet. (Whoa, deja vu…) CSKA Moscow, 3-0.
Montepaschi Siena vs. Olympiacos – Olympiacos might be able to run with Siena, but Montepaschi’s got too many weapons & too much experience for Reds to contend with.
Or, in simplified version: Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo MC-CAY-LEBB! Montepaschi Siena, 3-1.
