| CSKA will play with Real and Barcelona The draw for the second group stage of the ULEB Euroleague, held yesterday in Barcelona, identified the titled Spanish “Real” and “Barcelona”, as well as “Scavolini” from the Italian city of Pesaro, as opponents for the CSKA basketball players. The host team of the upcoming Moscow Final Four tournament in May was frankly unlucky with the draw - our group represents perhaps the worst possible option.
Before the draw began, all 16 clubs were divided into four pots based on their performance in the preliminary stage. The army team found themselves in the same company with the winners of two other groups: Maccabi (Tel Aviv), Fortitudo (Italy) and the Turkish club Efes Pilsen, which took second place with the best additional indicators. That is, these teams should not have met each other at the second stage. The drawing procedure required compliance with several other conditions. At the “Top 16” stage, more than two clubs from the same group of the first stage or representing the same country cannot be brought together in any of the four quartets. The rule is not superfluous at all, since four Italian and three Spanish teams continue to fight for the trophy. All these specified restrictions were observed, but this did not make things any easier for CSKA. In Group “E” the Muscovites could have faced simpler opponents, but this, alas, did not happen.
Barcelona failed in the middle of the first stage (one victory in five meetings), but won five times in the last six matches of Group B. In the Spanish ASV League, the 2003 Euroleague champion Barca is in high fourth place. The core of the team consists of such famous players as the twice world champion Serbian Dejan Bodiroga, the winner and best basketball player of the 1999 European Championship as part of the Italian national team Gregor Fučka, the 221-centimeter giant Roberto Duenas, the Spanish long-range sniper, silver medalist of Euro 2003 Jose Navarro. By the second stage, Barça, whose club colors practically coincide with the army ones, will add Croatian striker Andrija Zizic, who brought Cibona an average of 15 points per game. It is worth recalling that in the last round of Group B, the blue garnets defeated last year's tournament champion Maccabi - 81:79.
“Real” is the leader in the Spanish championship, which many experts quite rightly call the strongest on the continent. The Madrid team, having secured their place in the Top 16 ahead of schedule, did not strain themselves on the international stage and lost their last three matches in Group A. Real Madrid's most productive player in the Euroleague is American guard Louis Bullock (18.1 points per game). The Spaniard Alberto Herreros shoots with a high percentage of hits from behind a six-meter arc, there are other famous names - the Greek Antonis Fotsis, the American Elmer Bennett. The confrontation between CSKA and Real Madrid has a long and rich history - these clubs met three times in the dramatic finals of the European Cup in the 1960s. At the first stage of the current tournament, the army team has already visited Spain twice, playing in Malaga with Unicaja and in Vitoria with Tau. Now they will have two new trips to the Iberian Peninsula.
Scavolini became the only team to make it into the Top 16 from sixth place in the group. In the A-1 series, the club from Pesaro still has an equal balance of victories and defeats - 11 each. American Charles Smith invariably scores double-digit points in each of the Euroleague matches, being the best sniper of the tournament. There are also bright personalities - Croatian Marko Milic, veteran Alessandro Frosini and Finnish center Hanna Mottola, who played two years in the NBA.
The composition of other groups is as follows: “D” - “Maccabi”, “Cibona”, “Ulker” (Turkey), “Siena” (Italy); “F” -- “Fortitudo”, “Panathinaikos” (Greece), “Zalgiris” (Lithuania), “Tau”; “G” - “Efes Pilsen”, “Benetton” (Italy), AEK (Greece), “Sopot” (Poland). The two best teams from each quartet advance to the quarterfinals. CSKA will begin the second stage on February 23 or 24 with a game in Barcelona. Ilya TRISVIATSKY |
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