By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
AEK and ERA Nymburk will go it again. These two clubs are both BCL originals, having started with the competition all the way back in 2016. They have met four times in the past four years, twice in the 17/18 season with AEK en route to the title, and twice in the following Regular Season last year.
The opening game of the second day of the quarterfinals tips off 18:30 (Athens time) and below you can read the detailed preview, as featured on championsleague.basketball:
AEK have won three of those encounters but the sum total difference between the clubs over those games is just +6 points to AEK. Nymburk can also claim to have won the only Play-Offs game between the two at the OAKA. In the first leg of the 2018 Round of 16, Nymburk pulled off a shock and went back to Prague with a 10 point lead.
ERA Nymburk
Head coach Oren Amiel gave Nymburk fans the news they needed to hear when he signed to stay at the club into next season. Amiel has also just been named Coach of the Year in the BCL and will be riding the momentum of the club’s best season into Final 8.
The roster has changed a lot since Nymburk beat Teksut Bandirma to secure a place in the Final 8. Luka Rupnik and Jerrick Harding have come into form a new guard partnership. Rupnik has two seasons of BCL experience and is a player that has a track record for making some spectacular shots. The Slovenian averaged over 11 points and 3.5 assists for Antwerp.
Jerrick Harding will be spending his rookie season in Europe with Nymburk and comes in from Weber State. They have high hopes for Harding as a unique scoring talent in Nymburk. Joining Rupnik and Harding on the perimeter is Omar Prewitt. Prewitt is another established BCL player and has shot over 40% from behind the arc for both Aris and Teksut Bandirma.
Vojtech Hruban and Hayden Dalton are back on the wings. Dalton gave Oren Amiel the versatility to play on the wing or at the four positions and hammered home some of the biggest dunks we saw this season. Hruban is the best news of all for Nymburk fans and without question, the player that AEK will need to focus on most. Hruban is now the all-time leading scorer across the four seasons of the BCL and his 14.8 points per game this season was a career-high – rightfully earning him a place in the Star Lineup.
The final puzzle piece in terms of import signings was Stephen Zimmerman. The American center comes in to replace Zach Hankins after spending his rookie season helping Telekom Baskets Bonn to reach the BCL Play-Offs for the first time. Zimmerman is multi-skilled and had a great habit of producing his best performances against Bonn’s toughest opponents.
Playing style
Nymburk’s Defensive Rating of 95.5 points conceded per 100 possessions is the best in the league and also the best of any club since the first season. They held opponents to just 39% shooting overall, the lowest in the BCL, and blocked 10.4% of the shots attempted against them – the second-highest percentage of any team this season. Coach Oren Amiel achieved this with a defensive system combing a mixture of man and zone defenses. Like the zone pressure that dropped into a 2-3 zone in the clip below.
Defense starts with offensive rebounding for Nymburk. They rebounded 34.4% of their own misses, good for second in the league. Traditional basketball wisdom suggests that the more players a team commits to attack the offensive glass, the more likely they are to get caught in transition. Not for Nymburk though. Watch the clips below and notice that all five Nymburk players match up as the shot goes up. They are then in the position to either contest the rebound from behind their man or track any runners.
Key Player
Vojtech Hruban is undoubtedly the man that Nymburk need most to win this game. Watch out for Nymburk using pin downs to get him good looks. If Hruban sees the ball go through the net early in the game, that will be string music to Oren Amiel and Nymburk’s ears. Watch out for this set they use from sideline out of bounds situations. The timing is the key.
AEK
AEK are the current Greek Cup champions and are hosting the BCL Final 8. Where have we heard this before? Head coach Ilias Papatheodorou was brought into the club to win things and he has delivered already. There may be a weight of expectation around the club hosting the Final 8 but if any group of players has the experience and temperament to manage that pressure, it’s this group.
What else is there to say about the likes of Nikos Zisis, Tyrese Rice, Matt Lojeski, Jonas Maciulis, and Marcus Slaughter. Between them, there is only one title in European basketball they haven’t won. Rice is particular has signed a short term deal with the sole intention of adding the Basketball Champions League to complete the set.
The talent on this roster doesn’t end there, the supporting cast of Nikos Gkikas, Linos Chrysikopoulos, Darion Atkins, and Vlado Jankovic are also joined by youngsters like Rogvopoulos and Katsivelis. This is a squad built to win.
Playing Style
Statistically, AEK are joint fourth in the BCL offensively. Despite only scoring 76 points per game, they also play at the second-lowest Pace with only 71 possessions per 40 minutes. You need to look at how efficiently they score to understand how they are such a good offensive team. AEK score 112 points per 100 possessions. The pace control is by design for coach Papatheodorou. Even before Zisis, Rice, and Lojeski joined, this was never a team that was trying to outrun anyone. The plan has always been to hunt the right matchup. This team is also the best midrange shooting team, especially from the short corner areas. Largely thanks to Keith Langford‘s ability to isolate in these areas and score 1v1.
It’s not just about scoring from the post either, AEK use the likes of Langford, Jankovic, and Chrysikopoulos in the post as creative hubs. The action in the clip below is something you are very likely to see against Nymburk. #33 Jankovic receives a UCLA screen to get a post catch on the low block. #26 Howard Sant-Roos then clears to the weak side as #44 Slaughter “splits” the post as a screener for Sant-Roos to eventually sprint back and score. Now replace Sant-Roos with Matt Lojeski and you should have a clear picture in your head for what to expect.
On the defensive end, Marcus Slaughter has carried much of the load, his ability to read dangerous situations and get over to help or protect the rim is invaluable for AEK. To evidence this, AEK started the season without him in Greece and lost games that they’d be expected to win. His return from injury will be a major boost.
From a system perspective, Papatheodorou will always want his team to be aggressive, especially in the pick-and-roll. Watch the clip below and see how Slaughter takes two full slides to his left to hedge the ball screen, then sprints back to his man.
Yannick Moreira is known as a double-double machine and will add some scoring power to the frontline, which is especially important when so much of AEK’s offense comes from their guards. He is also a BCL Champion and was employed very successfully by Djordjevic during last years final, in a very similar aggressive, pick-and-roll defense scheme.
Key Player
Keith Langford. It has to be. There are so many big game performers on this team and should it be Tyrese Rice that is feeling it down the stretch, then AEK will have no trouble going to him but Langford has been the man for AEK in the clutch all season, and you’d be crazy to predict him to be anything other than ice-cold when AEK need him the most.
Photo: Basketball Champions League