By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
ANTWERP– The players of Iberostar Tenerife walked through the mixed zone of Sportpaleis arena towards the locker room. After celebrating their team’s qualification to the Basketball Champions League Final with a bit of singing and dancing, they didn’t just rest. Instead, they returned to the court.
They couldn’t refuse the constant call of a couple of hundreds of team fans that made the travel all the way from Spain to Antwerp, Belgium to see them competing for the BCL title.
“They [fans] are part of the team,” Tenerife forward Javier Beiran told Eurohoops. “We know who and how they are.”
“I mean… they have traveled here from so far. And they spend a lot of money doing so. They are here singing against 17.000 people. They are simply great,” Beiran said while in awe of his team’s supporters. Tenerife fans were still heard in the background.
They were excited since they had just seen their team beating tournament host Telenet Antwerp Giants to advance to the title game.
On Sunday (5/5), these loud people may witness their team lifting the trophy for a second time in three years. Beiran and the rest of his teammates intend to fight hard towards that goal.
“It’s an honor,” Beiran said to Eurohoops when asked about the prospect of winning his second BCL title. “But also a bit of a pressure. We’ve been fighting for this the whole season. We played so hard the whole season. We finished first in the Group, then we had the quarterfinals.”
“We are here. And we are here to win,” Beiran added. The 31-year-old player scored 14 points in the semifinal.
To qualify to the Final, Beiran and Tenerife stopped the dark-horse run of Antwerp Giants. A key aspect of this win was shutting down Giants guard Paris Lee.
“It was a very positive thing stopping Paris Lee. He averaged 14 points prior to the semifinal but he scored only four against us. We tried to deny him the ball and get him out of the game. I think we did a good job on that.”
Tenerife fell behind 12 – 20 at the end of the first period but then turned the heat up on defense to force its opponents to just six points in the second period. They finished halftime up 31 – 26 and never looked back.
“We knew they are inexperienced. But they started the game really good. They scored 20 points yet in the second quarter we increased our defensive levels and we let them to just six points. That gave us energy to play better and share the ball.”