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Thursday December 27, 2012 the basketball Euroleague 2012/2013 Top 16 is starting. In the regular season the only negative surprise was the elimination of EA7 Emporio Armani Milan, a team that started the season with ambitions but showed a lot of problems.
In recent years, the Top 16 started around mid-January but this season the formula has been changed. In the new Top 16 there are only two groups of 8 teams each so there will be more games. This new structure with 4 teams for each group that will go to the quarter-finals will definitely change this second phase of the Euroleague.
With the old formula, if a strong team started the Top 16 badly there was the risk that it didn’t recover but this year there’s more time to compensate for one or two bad games. On the other hand, the team that finishes fourth in its group goes to the quarter-finals but will play the first team of the other group, meaning one of the teams favorite to win the Euroleague.
Let’s take a look at the Top 16 groups.
Group E
Real Madrid
Zalgiris Kaunas
Unicaja Malaga
CSKA Moscow
Panathinaikos Athens
Anadolu Efes Istanbul
Alba Berlin
Brose Baskets Bamberg
Real Madrid, Zalgiris Kaunas, Unicaja Malaga and CSKA Moscow played an excellent regular season and are the favorites to go to the quarter-finals. Zalgiris has been surprisingly positive inserting new players very quickly, in the Top 16 must confirm its high level. Instead, Panathinaikos Athens struggled a bit at the beginning of a season in which the team faced major changes, starting with that of the coach because Zeljko Obradovic “reigned” for 13 years. In the Top 16 the Athens team will definitely try to play better to go to the quarter-finals and could make it if one of the four favorites has some problem. There will also be a great fight for the top spot in the group.
Group F
Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv
FC Barcelona Regal
BC Khimki Moscow Region
Olympiacos Piraeus
Montepaschi Siena
Besiktas JK Istanbul
Fenerbahce Ulker Istanbul
Caja Laboral Vitoria
Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, Regal FC Barcelona and Olympiacos Piraeus have shown they’re the strongest teams in the group in the regular season so they should qualify without problems and fight to conquer the first position in the group. The other teams are all capable of fighting for fourth place and the qualification for the quarter-finals. Among them, Montepaschi Siena started the regular season with three losses suffering the many changes made from the last season but over time has improved a lot and now could play a good Top 16 and go to the quarterfinals.
As always, may the best win! 🙂
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