Who can stop Unicaja from winning back-to-back BCL title?
Unicaja Malaga is the favourite to win back-to-back titles in the Basketball Champions League. The Andalusian team has the best roster in the competition. The trophies they won this year (BCL, Spanish SuperCup and Intercontinental Cup) give them huge confidence to repeat the success this season.
Besides Unicaja there are three other teams from the Spanish ACB League in the BCL and the one that presents the biggest threat for the team from Malaga is Tenerife. The insular side is a specialist in the Basketball Champions League as they won the competition twice (in 2017 and 2022) while also losing the Final in 2019 and 2024. They have a quality roster and big ambitions this season too, with veteran players like Marcelinho Huertas, Giorgi Shermadini, Bruno Fitipaldo and Tim Abromaitis to name just a few. Fitipaldo, Fran Guerra and Payton Willis are the leaders in scoring so far for Tenerife.
Wurzburg currently leads Group A and could be one of the surprise teams in the Final stages of the competition. The German side is 3-0 after beating Hapoel Holon and Igokea at home and in Round 3 they came away with a hard-fought win in France against Nanterre. Sasa Filipovski’s team also has a positive record in the German BBL so far with a 3-2 record and one of the defeats was in Munchen where they lost by just one point against EuroLeague side Bayern. Americans Zac Seljaas, Mike Davis Jr. and Jhivvan Jackson are the top scorers of the team in BCL so far and Seljaas is dominant under the basket as well where he has an average of 7.3 rebounds per game.
Tortona is another team that is 3-0 in its group and the Italian team recorded impressive wins against Manresa and in Lisbon against Benfica. Walter de Raffaele is doing a great job with this team both in BCL and the Italian Serie A where Tortona is 3-1. Christian Vital is the leading scorer of the team in BCL with an average of 19 points per game. Arturs Strautins has 14 points per game and Ismael Kamagate has a monster season so far with 13.7 points per game and 8,7 rebounds per game.
Imre Halasz
Photo credit: FIBA
