U-Banca Transilvania – true FIBA Europe Cup title contenders
U-Banca Transilvania – true FIBA Europe Cup title contenders
Today U-Banca Transilvania will meet at home Rahoveci for the 2nd leg of the Fiba Europe Cup qualifiers in Cluj-Napoca. The Romanian team won already the first game in Kosovo with a huge margin so they have the qualification assured. Since the beginning of the preseason, I saw them as one of the title contenders of Fiba Europe Cup because of the impressive transfers made during the summer. I really think this squad could play as well without any problems in Basketball Champions League.
Let’s see what are their strengths in this European campaign:
- a very good tactician in Dusko Vujosevic, who has huge experience to prepare the all the offensive and defensive details of the games
- a motivated and quality roster, based on very-known foreigner players like Darko Planinic, Donatas Tarolis, Patrick Richard and so on
- a very deep rotation, including a lot of Romanian role players, who can come up from the bench with an important contribution. In the first game at Rahoveci, the Romanians of U-Banca Transilvania played together more than 60 minutes scoring 21 points.
In the next phase of the competition, there’s no doubt about U-Banca Transilvania will qualify from the group, where they can have some difficulties only with Enisey Krasnoyarsk, the tough team from Russia who already smashed CSKA Moscow in the first round of the VTB United League. The other two teams of the group G are Balkan Botevgrad and Sodertalje Kings, who have average rosters and cannot aim to enter the next level. The Romanian team instead has a historical chance this season to advance to the final stages of the entire competition, depending also on which teams will fall from BasketballCL to fight in the Fiba Europe Cup playoff. Anyway, from the teams engaged in the Europe Cup groups, I see U-Banca Transilvania one of the strongest competitors, after Pinar Karsiaka, Enisey Krasnoyarsk and Bahcesehir.
Photo: FIBA Europe Cup
Gratian Cormos
