By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
After many twists and turns, the time has finally arrived for the big event that will conclude the 2019-20 Basketball Champions League season, the Final 8 in Athens.
The opening day slate includes the first two of the four Quarter-Finals, which will see some (not so) old foes cross paths again and features three clubs that reach this stage of the competition for the first time. Let’s have a closer look at some facts and figures on the Wednesday games:
Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem vs. Hereda San Pablo Burgos – 17:30 CEST (18:30 local time)
- Hapoel captain J’Covan Brown will be sidelined through injury for at least two months, so he will not play at the Final 8 although he is in Athens with his teammates.
- Burgos have already played three official games in September, in the Spanish Liga Endesa. In their latest outing on Sunday they beat Acunsa GBC 90-77 on the road, behind 22 points from Thad McFadden and 17 from Ken Horton. On the other hand, this Quarter-Final will be Hapoel’s first official game since the conclusion of the 2019-20 Israeli league season in August.
- This is the only Quarter-Finals pairing that features two teams which were in the same Regular Season group. Each team won its home game, albeit Burgos scored exactly 91 points in both games. The Spanish team won the Gameday 6 clash 91-84 and Hapoel prevailed 96-91 on Gameday 12.
- This is the second time Hapoel reach the Quarter-Finals and the second time they face a Spanish team at this stage. The Israeli team lost to Iberostar Tenerife in 2018-19 and the Spanish went on to reach the Final.
- Hapoel led the league this season in scoring, two-point field goal percentage and free-throw percentage. The Jerusalem team averaged 89 points per game, shot at 60.6 percent from within the arc and 81.4 percent from the free-throw line. Hapoel were also joint-leaders in blocked shots, averaging 3.9 blocks per game
- Burgos led the league in made three-pointers in their maiden BCL campaign, averaging 11.4 made triples per game. The Spanish team also led the league in scoring off the bench, as their second unit players averaged 41.8 points per game.
- Hapoel forward TaShawn Thomas leads the league in field goal percentage, as he shot 72.1 percent from the floor on average. Thomas scored a BCL career-high 27 points in Hapoel’s win over Burgos in January.
- Vitor Benite of Burgos scored at least 20 points in five of his last nine BCL games before the hiatus, his best stretch in the competition. The Brazilian international had only two 20-point games in his first 20 appearances in the league. In his last four BCL games, Benite made 100 percent of his free-throws (16 of 16) and 57 percent of his attempted three-pointers (16 of 28) averaging 21.5 points per game in that span.