Της Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Status, dynamics, form and the significance of results were the criteria for ranking the 18 teams.
#18 ZALGIRIS KAUNAS
Previous ranking: 17 (-1)
Record: 4-12
At home: 2-7
Away: 2-5
Offense-Defense: 75.9-77.2
There was a time when Zalgiris was in eighth place. It was after the win over Fenerbahce (76-79 in Round 6). The Lithuanian champs had to wait 56 days until they could celebrate the next one. Nine consecutive defeats later and in spite of the win over Bayern (73-98), they are in 17th place. This season had begun full of ambition for Coach Sarunas Jasikevicius and his players. Alex Perez is not one of them any longer, K.C. Rivers was added and is trying to provide solutions from the backcourt, and Marius Grigonis is temporarily out because of an injury, just when the team needs all the help it could get, especially with games like the ones against Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv and Real Madrid coming up.
#17 ZENIT ST PETERSBURG
Previous ranking: 18 (+1)
Record: 4-12
At home: 1-7
Away: 3-5
Offense-Defense: 73.4-80.5
Zenit St Petersburg doesn’t have enough time to enjoy a win, it goes straight back to losing. Now there are so many losses that it is almost steadily at the bottom of the rankings and haven’t been able to climb any higher than 14th place (after Round 5). Zenit hasn’t beaten any teams from the top eight, which would have been a big surprise, things being as they are. Meanwhile, in the last loss to Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade, the team also recorded a season-low in offense (58 points) a few days after the big win over Fenerbahce in Round 15. It was only Zenit’s third victory away from home and the team’s home record is the worst in the competition.
#16 FC BAYERN MUNICH
Previous ranking: 16 (-)
Record: 6-10
At home: 5-4
Away: 1-6
Offense-Defense: 75.1-82.1
The first winning streak this season ended abruptly for FC Bayern Munich with defeats at the hands of FC Barcelona (67-77 in Round 15) and Zalgiris (73-98 in Round 16) which until that points had lost nine in a row. No one should wonder why Bayern hasn’t managed to get near the playoff zone after Round 5 (between 10th and 16th place since then), even though it’s just two wins away. The road ahead looks just as difficult since five of the next seven games are away from home and their performances outside of Munich haven’t been exactly enviable.
#15 KIROLBET BASKONIA VITORIA-GASTEIZ
Previous ranking: 11 (-4)
Record: 6-10
At home: 4-3
Away: 2-7
Offense-Defense: 73.6-79.3
KIROLBET Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz was battling – aside from misfortune (see Jayson Granger and Patricio Garino) – the bad side to find consistency on the court, and in the end, they lost it on the bench too, where Velimir Perasovic left and Dusko Ivanovic has now returned. He didn’t make the difference in the first game (81-57 in Berlin) and now Baskonia has suffered three consecutive defeats, five in the last six games and the seventh place it once occupied (Round 6) now seems like a distant memory. With everything else, the tumble affected Tornike Shengelia too, and in the game against ALBA, he not only saw his streak of 15 consecutive double-digit performances come to an end (1 point on 0-for-6 two-point shooting and 1-of-2 on free throws, he also recorded the third-worst performance in his career in terms of PIR (-2) when he’s seventh in the competition this season (18.8).
#14 ALBA BERLIN
Previous ranking: 12 (-2)
Record: 5-11
At home: 4-4
Away: 1-7
Offense-Defense: 83.9-88.1
ALBA hasn’t found any balance between its offense and the worst defense in the competition and cannot escape from the bottom of the rankings; it is in 16th place for the fourth round in a row. It’s not that ALBA isn’t trying. Two of the four consecutive defeats before the last win over Baskonia came in overtime. Overall, ALBA’s played four overtimes out of the twelve in total by all teams in the competition this season, tallying one win (at Panathinaikos) and three defeats (vs. Anadolu Efes, Fenerbahce Beko and Bayern, in that order). Maybe if their injury problems were not so frequent…
#13 FENERBAHCE BEKO ISTANBUL
Previous ranking: 10 (-3)
Record: 5-11
At home: 4-4
Away: 1-7
Offense-Defense: 78.9-82.3
Fenerbahce had a total of five defeats in the regular season last year. This season they already have more than double and the first half isn’t even over yet. This says it all about Coach Zeljko Obradovic’s team. How is it that they have only won five times, none of them against teams above seventh place (Khimki), and how they lost to Valencia (98-100 after overtime in Round 16) for the fourth loss in a row. Substituting Vladimir Stimac (to Crvena Zvezda) for Malcolm Thomas might give the frontline more in the paint in the absence of the injured – once again – Jan Vesely. Nando De Colo (fourth in scoring with 19.2 ppg. and fifth in PIR with 20.2) wouldn’t say no to some additional help.
#12 OLYMPIACOS PIRAEUS
Previous ranking: 9 (-3)
Record: 6-10
At home: 4-3
Away: 2-7
Offense-Defense: 81.1-83.5
The first winning streak of the season against ALBA (80-99 in Round 10) and Milan (91-70 in Round 11) was not followed up on and now Olympiacos has four defeats in the last five games. The win over Khimki (109-98 OT) was the third against a team from the playoff zone, but this matters little since the Reds have been unable to join them (oscillating between ninth and 16th place). The completion of the first half of the regular season will find Olympiacos awaiting Fenerbahce at home along with the return of Nikola Milutinov (league leader in rebounds with 9.3 and fourth in PIR with 21), even though most will have their eyes on Vassilis Spanoulis and his chance of surpassing Juan Carlos Navarro as the top scorer in EuroLeague history.
#11 AX ARMANI EXCHANGE MILAN
Previous ranking: 7 (-4)
Record: 8-8
At home: 6-2
Away: 2-6
Offense-Defense: 77.9-79.4
It seems like the time Milan was playing to solidify itself in one of the top four spots is gone for good. In second place after Round 7 and fourth after Round 10, since then Milan has dropped down to eighth. That is only natural since it has seven losses in the last 11 games. All this for a team that has otherwise beaten three teams from the top of the standings (Barcelona, Maccabi and Panathinaikos). Arturas Gudaitis still hasn’t found his old self, Nemanja Nedovic hasn’t fully recovered, while all the others are on a downward slope, even Sergio Rodriguez (sixth in assists with 5.5 and 15th in PIR with 15.1).
#10 KHIMKI MOSCOW REGION
Previous ranking: 8 (-2)
Record: 8-8
At home: 6-1
Away: 2-7
Offense-Defense: 87.4-87.9
Alexey Shved (top scorer with 20.9 ppg., eighth in assists with 5.3 and ninth in PIR with 17.3) missed the game against Fenerbahce (89-76 in Round 11) because of an injury, Janis Timma has missed many more games and Khimki has lost six of their last eight. It’s only beaten ALBA Berlin (104-87 in Round 13) and Zalgiris Kaunas (83-74 in Round 15) in that time. For some mysterious reason, Khimki is one of only three teams that haven’t been out of the playoff zone at any point in time (Barcelona and CSKA are the others). How much longer? Until Round 8, it had defeated three of the teams from the top eight and had even reached fourth place. Since then, Khimki’s been oscillating between seventh and eighth place.
#9 CRVENA ZVEZDA MTS BELGRADE
Previous ranking: 14 (+5)
Record: 7-9
At home: 4-4
Away: 3-5
Offense-Defense: 72.6-75.9
Crvena Zvezda mts Belgrade’s winning percentage is at 66.7% with Dragan Sakota on the bench but this improvement only bumped the Serbian champs up to 11th place in the standings. And this because they were already as low as 16th place (Round 9). This doesn’t take away from the fact that Zvezda looks improved and is trying as hard as it can to upset the situation in the standings. Vladimir Stimac (from Fenerbahce) and Kevin Punter (from Olympiacos) are the new faces on a team where, lately, the duo of Billy Baron and Lorenzo Brown has been putting up double digits to leave more teams behind them.
#8 VALENCIA BASKET
Previous ranking: 15 (+7)
Record: 7-9
At home: 5-2
Away: 2-7
Offense-Defense: 82-83.9
Five consecutive defeats in the opening games and stuck in 18th place until Round 7. Seven wins and four defeats since then and a rise to 10th place. Valencia Basket was late to declare its presence in the EuroLeague, but better late than never. Fenerbahce found out the hard way in the last game for 2019, in a win that is characteristic of how unpredictable the competition is this season. Regardless of whether the results are positive or negative, Bojan Dubljevic (eighth in scoring with 15.5 ppg., fifth in rebounds with 6.6, sixth in PIR with 19.6) remains a reference point.
#7 LDLC ASVEL VILLEURBANNE
Previous ranking: 13 (+6)
Record: 8-8
At home: 7-2
Away: 1-6
Offense-Defense: 74.3-79.6
There were more than a few people who thought that LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne would be content just to return to the EuroLeague for the first time since 2010. Even after the initial wins over Olympiacos Piraeus and Panathinaikos. But the French champs are proving to be tough. ASVEL may have the second-worst road record but, at home, almost no one else can come out on top. Four top teams have fallen in Lyon – CSKA, Panathinaikos, Khimki and Milan. The in-form David Lighty and now-healthy Adreian Payne have given something extra lately and they are two of the reasons ASVEL has been in ninth place in the last two rounds and only a win away from getting back into the playoff zone.
#6 PANATHINAIKOS OPAP ATHENS
Previous ranking: 6 (-)
Record: 9-7
At home: 6-3
Away: 3-4
Offense-Defense: 87.1-84.4
Panathinaikos had good momentum (four consecutive wins) going into the four games with Barcelona, Fenerbahce, Maccabi and Real, but they only beat the Turkish team and that happened at the end. At the same time, the defeat by Real Madrid (75-87 in Round 16) reminded the Greens of what they were trying to forget, that they’re no longer unbeatable at home. Otherwise, they would have beaten more than just one team (Efes) from those the playoff zone. Still, sixth place for the sixth consecutive round is no small feat. The fact that Nick Calathes was poor in terms of execution (10.3% 3PT%) in December – even though he leads the competition in assists (8.6) and is eighth in the PIR (18.6) – didn’t help at all.
#5 CSKA MOSCOW
Previous ranking: 4 (-1)
Record: 11-5
At home: 6-1
Away: 5-4
Offense-Defense: 84.2-76.7
CSKA had started to show signs of uncertainty in its game, but the win over Barcelona (67-96 in Round 11) made sure to quickly shut it down. Since then, it’s only lost to Maccabi (90-80 in Round 13) and has four wins and two defeats against teams from the playoff zone. Mike James seems to have taken personally the missed shot at the buzzer that could have beaten LDLC ASVEL Villeurbanne (67-66 in Round 7). Now he’s third in scoring (20 ppg.) in the competition and second in PIR (21.7), playing for the injured Will Clyburn, too.
#4 MACCABI FOX TEL AVIV
Previous ranking: 5 (+1)
Record: 11-5
At home: 8-0
Away: 3-5
Offense-Defense: 85.8-76.4
So what if top-ranked Efes defeated the Israeli champs (99-79) after five consecutive wins? Maccabi’s course is so good this season that it has been and still is fourth – for the sixth round in a row. And all this against constant misfortunes with injuries (Nate Wolters, Tarik Black, John DiBartolomeo and Omri Casspi again), and while Aaron Jackson still hasn’t made his debut and when Jalen Reynolds has just been announced. Scottie Wilbekin’s consistency (sixth in scoring with 16.3 ppg. and eighth in PIR with 16.8) has contributed greatly, as has their impenetrable home court, where the Israel champs remain unbeaten.
#3 ANADOLU EFES ISTANBUL
Previous ranking: 1 (-2)
Record: 13-3
At home: 6-2
Away: 7-1
Offense-Defense: 85.7-77.6
Efes had eight consecutive wins before it hosted CSKA Moscow and lost on the last shot (80-81, Round 15). Coach Ergin Ataman’s side was not discouraged at all and the proof of that is the 20-point win over Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv immediately after. Efes‘s record against almost all the other teams from the playoff zone is 3-3. It may no longer be alone at the top (first until Round 14), but even the tie with two other teams in first place is an equally impressive achievement for Shane Larkin (second in scoring with 20.2 ppg. and first in PIR with 23.1) and his gang, from which Bryant Dunston is still missing.