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Union Olimpija, Alba Berlin, Zalgiris and Besiktas.  No, those aren’t your cellar dwellers after week one; they’re your Euroleague group leaders.

Can any of them hold on to the top spot?  We think not.  A better question might be: can any of these teams even advance?

And how worried should we be about two of the the Italian teams, Siena and Cantú?

Follow Nick Gibson (@euro_adventures) and Sam Meyerkopf (@hooplikedrazen) on Twitter, and subscribe to the show on iTunes for free.

And make sure to let Rob Scott (@robscott33) know you missed him this week.  Faulty internet proved to be the death of our would-have-been triple time zoned recording session.

Get it together, London.

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8 Responses

  1. Vince

    Very interesting results this week, especially the margin in the Efes game

  2. Vaidas

    Somehow to reply in here seemed more pertinent.
    If Cedevita is so weak, why in your podcast Cedevita was 5th? In my mind this was clear: Cedevita was going to be bottom feeder in a group with 5 equally strong teams, fighting not to be 5th.
    And it’ll be war, because of extended top 16 cost is high.

    Seems like after week two, 3 of 4 group leaders are still leaders. Olimpija will not break into top 16, But the rest will fight for 2nd in their respective groups. That one win against cantu was a game for 5th place (not zalgiris and cedevita one). In group A there’s 4 teams that will not relinquish their places.

    Group B: Maccabi is a notch above the rest. Alba and Unicaja will duke it out for 2nd, while Elan Chalon-Sur-Saone will edge out prokom and montepaschi. Funny how with those slow old men kaukėnas, lavrinovic, sato and mccalebb montepaschi was in top 4 and top 8, and without them - it’s bye-bye after regular season. And Žalgiris with Ulker looks good.

    Žalgiris… This year it’s different. Usually in away games it’s like: “please, don’t let when too far ahead, keep the hope alive”, whis year it’s: “please, don’t let them get close, keep them at bay”. And they did. Žalgiris survived three pushes. With a little bit of luck they could broke that camel’s back then it was +14.

    Žalgiris will fight for 2nd. Why? Consider this: 7 players scored an average 8,5 to 13,5 ppg in two games. How can you defend, when leader changes every quarter? Next, it’s all about fighting spirit. They fight for every inch, they value the ball (9 turnoevers!), and they seen to enjoy it.

    Efes might be too good, and Olympiacos simply can’t handle pressure. They are cocky, yet so insecure, they were always used to being underdogs. And then it finally happens - what do you do? Monster loss to Efes will put them in their place, so they are more dangerous now.

    Armani will not last long. It’s one of those times, when money can’t buy succes. Caja Laboral will bounce back and Milano will be overboard.

    Group D: Barcelona is head and shoulders above the rest. CSKA ir mediocre. If it wasn’t great clucth player in Sonny Weems, it would be 0-2 now. Both Partisan and Rytas led in the end. They will get it together though, but a group of individuals can only go so far.
    For a long time Besiktas was like Galatasarray (and any other Russian club) - throw some money. Now it’s different. They will contest CSKA for 2nd.

    Rytas and Partizan. Partizan is young and hungry - that is always dangerous. Rytas is always overachieving. But not this year, because besides Seibutis and Katelynas, the rest of the team is rubish. If youngsters in Partizan can hadle pressure when season starts to wear on - rytas will have hard time.
    So that is my take :)

    And finally - J. Plaza told that he likes James Taylor “You’ve Got A Friend” very much. He said it reflects his life’ philosophy. Anthony Bowie used to sing it alot. If you believe in good omens..

    P.s. Is there any good sites or blogs about euroleague? Because there isn’t much good or I just suck at google?

    P.p.s
    Will you reconsider your believes about Žalgiris this season? :)

    http://euroleagueadventures.com
    http://www.in-the-game.org/
    http://www.ballineurope.com/

  3. Slam

    Vaidas that is quite the response, love the passion. You’re right about Cedevita, the parts aren’t meshing and it isn’t looking good. Zalgiris on the other hand has been great. They’re seriously out-rebounding teams and are super deep. They also seem to be playing with much more of an edge this year. Milano has been pretty inconsistent and have just relied on individual performances so far, which shouldn’t lead to long term success.

    The Efes backcourt of Lucas and Farmer is suffocating. Both are deadly off the dribble and can D up. They’re going to be really good and explosive if those two stay healthy.

    Finally other Euroleague sites to check out:

    http://euro-step.net/
    http://www.bballheadlines.com/
    http://www.talkbasket.net/
    http://thebasketballpost.com/
    http://www.eurohoops.net/
    http://www.sportando.net/eng/

    For Euro prospect stuff you have to check out: http://www.draftexpress.com/ http://www.eurohopes.com/home http://www.europeanprospects.com/

  4. Rob Scott

    Hey Vaidas, thanks for the comment. I’ll definitely hold my hands up about Zalgiris and admit it looks like I underestimated them. In my head, I looked at the roster, and a few of their man guys didn’t play well last year - Popovic, Darden, Lafayette, Darius in particular. Add in the age of the Lavrinovic brothers, and Kaukenas, and a coach who tends to favour an uptempo style, and there were some question marks. With Romanov being who he is, it was tempting to imagine a scenario where it didn’t go well early on, Plaza immediately fell under pressure and was quickly fired. It doesn’t look that way, and that’s great to see.

    Beating Cedevita was one thing, but Zalgiris impressed me a whole lot this week, to beat Baskonia on the road. Plaza has them aggressively defending ball screens, the rotations were timely and effective, and the rebounding at both ends was impressive. Put that with knockdown three point shooting and it’s a team that will be hard to beat. Baskonia has real problems, they follow great offensive trips with terrible defensive possessions, but as you say, Zalgiris kept holding them off and showed great mental strength to finish a close game, pretty much the opposite of last season’s team.

  5. Vince

    Does anyone else think that if Partizan can hold on for a bit, gather some experience, and squeek into the round of 16, they could be very sneaky dangerous? The only thing that would be a question mark with them is a go-to guy like CSKA had in Sonny Weems in the last game. If Partizan could get an experienced player that can create his own shot they could be really going somewhere. With the final cuts coming up in the NBA pre-season it might be very interesting who some of the teams pick up

  6. Slam

    Vince I think this Partizan team is very similar to last year’s Olympaicos team, except they don’t have a Spanoulis. Olympiacos struggled in the beginning of the regular season but Duda had a plan, he taught those players, and worked all year to get them to peak at the right time. Dule will be doing the same thing in Partizan. These players need to take some licks, continue learning the game, and find their roles before they can truly come together as a team. The regular season will be tough to get out of but if they can, there will be few other teams that improve as much as Partizan does this year. Yes, dangerous. Especially if Westermann can continue to score and cut down on turnovers. He just tries to force things, especially passes to his bigs when he drives, when the play isn’t there. Stay poised Leo.

    Vaidas and Rob, so do you think Zalgiris advances? Darden has looked very good so for and as you say, Zalgiris looks more organized, on the court and off of it, so far than we’ve seen in a while. Even Rytas is upstaging them with their antics. If I had to bet money on Zalgiris or Milano advancing, I think I take the boys from Lithuanian. More toughness, more veterans, and just as shaky of a point guard situation.

  7. Vince

    the new blogs are all linked to this blog when you click on them

  8. Vaidas

    What’s great about group C - it’s pretty even. No one is unbeatable. A few mistakes and you may be done. Even Top 16 might be more forgiving than this.
    I would say 70% Milano, 20% Laboral 10% Žalgiris. But you never know..
    Thanks for the links :)