Great battles in game 2 of the BCL Play-in

Four Basketball Champions League Play-in series will have their Game 2 played today, while the other four will be held tomorrow.
Obviously, the teams that won Game 1 away have great chances to advance this week and they are Oostende, Promitheas and Reggiana. The Greek team is the biggest favourite to make it 2-0 and end the series. Karsiyaka lost some of its key players in the past few days and they will have a very hard time turning around the series against Promitheas.
Oostende won Game 1 in Nanterre by 10 points (88-78) and is considered a favourite in Game 2 as well. The same applies to Reggiana, who defeated Bonn in Germany last week after an amazing performance by Jaylen Barford, who scored 34 points. However, Bonn was leading by 12 points in the last quarter before the Italian team made a great run in the end, and Wednesday’s game could also be decided by just one or two key possessions.
Tortona and Galatasaray are The ones that won Game 1 at home and are the favourites to win away. Tortona will travel to Greece to defeat Peristeri again. Although they are probably the better team, it will be a difficult place to win for Walter De Raffaelle’s team. Meanwhile, Galatasaray has great ambitions for this season’s BCL and they certainly don’t want to stretch the series to three games. However, they will need to play good basketball to beat Saint Quentin, a team that defeated Monaco at home this season, one of the great EuroLeague teams.
Then there are the games where the odds are that we will see a decisive Game 3. Hapoel Holon are slightly favourites to beat Petkim, and so is Maccabi Ironi Ramat Gan against Falco, so we might see another matchup between these two teams in Szombathely. Finally, Manisa and Chemnitz, where Game 1 was decided by just one point could be the most exciting series.
Imre Halasz
Photo credit: BCL