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By
Simon
Dresden
NBADraft.net
4/16/08
And
the there were four. From the quarterfinal on the teams are
paired in do or die series depending on their results from the pre
rounds group phase. The winners of those series are then participants
for the Final Four event in Madrid next month.
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Omri
Casspi
Photo: Maccabi.co.il |
Surprisingly
two of the youngest squads qualified for this round. With Partizan
pulling the biggest upset of all in ousting the defending champions
Panathinaikos.
CSKA was paired
with Olympiacos, Maccabi hosted Barcelona, Siena took on Fenerbahce
and Tau Ceramica faced Partizan.
CSKA
won the series against Olympiacos but had to come from behind after
a first game upset, as Piräus stole the opening match in the
Moskau gym by two points. CSKA responded by gaining their home court
back with a ten point win in Olympiacos and then totally crashed
their opponents in the decisive game three in Russia. Milos
Teodosic
was a non factor in any game of the series finishing no better than
3 points in any contest. CSKA's youngsters were glued to the bench
except for the last blowout win, where some of them got some spare
minutes.
Siena handled Fenerbahce easily. Two and out was
the result for Istanbul's young squad. Semih
Erden,
Gasper
Vidmar, Emir
Preldzic came up big in the first game while Oguz
Savas and Omer
Asik took
the night off to some extent. In game 2 it was only Asik who could
provide some help while all the other youngsters seemed to be affected
facing elimination.
Tau
Ceramica needed all of their veteran poise to hold off
feisty Partizan in this series opener. Nikola
Pekovic and Novica
Velickovic
were as
always pacing Belgrade with Milenko
Tepic and
Uros
Tripkovic providing some relief. Pekovic gave the NBA bound
Splitter fits in every aspect and even fouled him out of this game.
Anyway Tau survived, only to get manhandled by Partizan and their
raucous crowd in Pinoir Arena in game 2. Pekovic, Velickovic, Tripkovic
and Tepic all came up big and again one had to wonder how scouts
can be so high on Splitter while Pekovic dominated him seemingly
at will. Splitter responded in the way of a champion. In the decisive
game three he was at his best and that was a lot to handle for Pekovic
who was held to single digits scoring and fouling out of this game.
Tepic, Tripkovic and Velickovic all did their thing but it just
wasn't enough to solve a veteran team. A great season has finished
for Partizan's youngsters and if they can stick together for a few
more years, they could be poised to draw comparisons to the famous
Split squads, which also had some promising youngsters who emerged
to have prosperous careers.
Maccabi
Tel Aviv took out Barca in a hard fought series that went
back and forth. Maccabi won their home court game to take a one
game lead in the series and Omri
Casspi played well from start to finish. Scoring 5 points
and grabbing 5 boards in 18 quality minutes. Barca took revenge
in the second encounter. Casspi paced Maccabi in this one scoring
18 points and grabbing a mind boggling 10 boards in 30+ minutes,
all team highs. But it wasn't enough to avoid a game 3 in Tel Aviv,
had just one veteran stepped up for Maccabi in this one, the series
would have been over. Casspi played only 6 minutes in this game,
only his coach knows why I guess, and had no production but Maccabi
prevailed and went on to the final four. Albert
Moncasi
never saw the floor in any game this series.
In the final
4 there will be not many youngsters to be seen actually playing
out on the floor. Best chance seems to be for Omri
Casspi to see one or the other minute since he seem to have
what it takes in some games, see game 2 in the last round. But sometimes
he just dwells on the bench. Tau and Sienna are veteran teams that
don't built on youngsters. CSKA may have the best assembly of high
priced youngsters in the whole competition but they are poised to
have the best seat in the house for this weekend, since CSKA will
go for the crown and with a team as deep as this there is not much
time to spare on the Artem
Zabelins, Alexey
Shveds or Anatoly
Kashirov s of the world. But maybe they can take in some
of the atmosphere and experience.
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