By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
The 2020-21 EuroCup regular season was completed Friday with the game between Joventut Badalona and JL Bourg. The Top 16 stage will now begin in January 12 and be completed in March 10 with the participating teams competing in groups of four.
Per EuroCup Basketball:
After an exciting regular season, the 7DAYS EuroCup Top 16 is set and ready to bring even more thrills in the coming two months. Four groups of four teams each will play six games between January 12 and March 10, 2021, with top two teams from each group moving on to the quarterfinals.
Three of the new Top 16 groups have at least one former competition champion, while the remaining group has this season’s lone undefeated team.
Group E features two former champions, fellow Spanish rivals Unicaja Malaga and Joventut Badalona, who have combined for 15 victories so far this season and are set to play each other in Round 1. The two will be challenged hard in this group by AS Monaco, a quarterfinalist last season, and fellow French League side Nanterre 92.
The makeup of Group F starts with the 2013 champion Lokomotiv Kuban Krasnodar, winner of eight regular-season games this season. Lokomotiv’s quest to reach its seventh quarterfinal in eighth EuroCup appearances in the competition will start against Boulogne Metropolitans 92, which won seven regular season games, and will also be tested against two teams with 6-4 records in the regular season, Partizan NIS Belgrade and Dolomiti Energia Trento.
Group G is headlined by the only undefeated team left in the competition, Virtus Segafredo Bologna, which won all 10 regular season games by an average margin of 11.6 points. Also in this group are two Adriatic League squads, Cedevita Olimpija Ljubljana and Buducnost VOLI Podgorica, as well as the only newcomer left in the competition, JL Bourg en Bresse.
The 2015 EuroCup finalist Herbalife Gran Canaria and 2011 champion UNICS Kazan are in Group H. Gran Canaria enters the Top 16 on a four-game winning streak, and will first face against a Top 16 first-timer, Mornar Bar, while UNICS will start things off against MoraBanc Andorra, the only three-win team in this year’s Top 16 field.
Not only surviving but finishing as high as possible in the EuroCup Top 16 is vital because all qualifiers to the playoffs will be ranked according to their final place, record and any applicable tie-breakers after this phase. The higher team according to that Top 16 ranking will have home-court advantage in any subsequent best-of-three playoff series en route to the title.
Get ready for the 7DAYS EuroCup Top 16 starting on Tuesday, January 12, 2017!