Dropping odds: U-Banca Transilvania – Darussafaka
Yesterday, at the first moment that I saw the odd of the encounter I knew that they were wrong. U-Banca Transilvania had 2.55 or even more, while Darussafaka had around 1.40-1.50 depending on the bookies.
I can understand the mistake of giving the odds because Darussafaka is considered a great Turkish team while the Romanians are a newcomer in the Basketball Champions League. Let’s give then some clues of my choice:
- Firstly, the odd was too big on U-BT, the great team that eliminated Peristeri, the host of the Athens tournament, in order to qualify in the BCL’s groups
- Then you should take a look at the core of the team, those 7-8 players that really count. In Turkey, definitely, the home-grown players are much better than the Romanian ones. But when we speak about foreigners, the situation changes a lot. Since a couple of years ago, in the domestic league of Turkey, you can play only with 5 foreigners, which I think is an excellent decision to improve the level of the young local guys, giving them space to play. At the same time in Romania, you can play with 6 foreigners. In this case, U-BT has also the 7th player an American naturalized Romanian, Patrick Richard. So actually the battle will be between 7 strong foreigners of U-Banca Transilvania and 5 decent foreigners plus Dogus Ozdemiroglu and Sinan Guler of Darussafaka. Very balanced encounter.
- If we take into consideration that the Romanian team has the home-court advantage and they are more rested than Darussafaka that had an overtime game against Galatasaray, U-BT is the favourite.
Image credit: Basketball Champions League
Gratian Cormos is a Romanian life coach, journalist, book writer and mentor currently living in the city of Barcelona, Spain.
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