On Monday, the ULEB Cup 2007-2008 started with a regame of the first ever European game between ASK Riga and Lukoil Academic. Of course, 50 years ago, the teams had different players and names, but it was a somehow strong historic symbol. Talking about historic, I have to say a few words about the competition this year.
First of all, the same problem that i encounter regularly with the Euroleague website also happens to be a problem for the ULEB Cup. The site is extremely slow to unreachable during game nights. How can that be possible. I mean, traffic is something they hope to have on their website, so please, dear ULEB team, be prepared to get some, because in other ways, a lot of people will be frustrated including myself.
Then, when finally you got to the first page, you see what the expansion really looks like. Tons of results you have to work through to get something like a view on what happened that night. With 54 teams, you will have like 27 games every Tuesday. It will be difficult to give a review of all of them so I will focus one just a few results or stats that popped out.
Of course, a surprise for me was the win of Fribourg from Switzerland after two overtimes. To be honest, I thought they would be killed every single game. (Oh, I just wanted to check the stats of that game, the site is still super slow) The veteran Kenyetta Johnson was huge and also former ASVEL guard Harold Mrazek was precise with 16/17FTs. Michael Wright, another former LNB player, from Turk Telekom topped all players with an efficiency rating of 47. Further good performances came from Jerry McCullough or Radoslav Rancik but also from the Center prospect Predrag Samardziski.
