By Arale Weisberg / aralos10@gmail.com
Fenerbahce swept the playoffs series against Maccabi and qualified for the first time in a Euroleague Final Four. Read about the interesting numbers that came out after this series.
* Maccabi are the first ever Euroleague champions to be eliminated with a 0-3 sweep in the playoffs. The last defending champs who couldn’t win a single match in a series were Olympiacos, who lost 0-2 to Partizan back in 1998.
* Sofoklis Schortsanitis just ended his fourth Euroleague season with Maccabi. He lost by Zeljko Obradovic in the final of his first season, and in the quarter finals of his second and fourth season. Only in his third season in 2013-14 he didn’t meet “Zoc”, so he won the trophy.
* Brian Randle had scored six three-pointers during the season. He had 6/8 vs his old team, ALBA Berlin, and 0/17 against all the other 11 opponents.
* Maccabi had a great run of six wins in six overtimes during the last couple of years, including last season’s Euroleague final and Israeli championship game. But last night, for the first time since April 2013, they lost.
* Devin Smith has had a weak series, scoring only 8.3 points per game, but his season average – 15 points – was pretty unique. The last Maccabi player to reach this number was Will Solomon, back in 2005-06.
* For the first time in 13 years, last night a Turkish club beat Maccabi in Tel Aviv. Since Efes Pilsen prevailed 78-76 in February 2002, the yellows had a streak of 12 home wins vs four different teams from Istanbul (Efes, Fenerbahce/Ulker, Galatasaray and Besiktas).
* Nikola Vujcic, Maccabi’s manager, should have known what was about to happen. The last Turkish team to make the final four was Efes Pilsen, 14 years ago. They beat KK Split in the playoffs, and Vujcic, at the age of 23, had played for the Croatian side back then.
* So Fenerbahce made history by advancing to their first ever Final Four. The last team to do so, at the expense of Maccabi, was Estudiantes Madrid in 1992.