(Basketball Champions League) – The curtain has risen on the qualification race for the Basketball Champions League and following Tuesday night’s action which featured a total of eight games (four in each Qualification Round) it’s time to take a look at the first meaningful figures of the competition.

164 – The highest combined score of the night (FC Porto 81–83 Utena). As is almost always the case early in the season when most teams have run their sets only in practice, defence was the main priority for everybody on Tuesday and Kataja Basket was the only side, in addition to Utena and Porto, to score more than 80 points.

121 – Speaking of Kataja, this was their team efficiency rating. The Finnish side enjoyed the highest margin of victory on Tuesday, beating Sodertalje Kings by a whopping 39 points, and were the only team to hit the century mark in terms of efficiency. U-BT Cluj Napoca, in second place, registered a rating of 96.

54.2% – Utena’s field goal percentage against FC Porto, the highest among all 16 teams. U-BT Cluj Napoca came quite close (53.6%) as the only other team to convert more than half of their shots from the floor.

39 – The efficiency rating of Daniel Mullings. The 25-year-old guard finished with 24 points, 13 rebounds, four assists and an eye-popping eight steals to set the bar very high for the remainder of the season.

21 – The number of offensive rebounds CSM Oradea brought down in their 71-64 win over Prievidza, enabling the Romanian team to score 25 vital second-chance points. It remains to be seen whether any side will manage to do better than this on the offensive glass.

21 – It bares belief, but this is how many turnovers Cluj-Napoca committed on Tuesday and still cruised to a 78-50 win over Petrolina AEK Larnaca.

8 – The players who registered a double-double on Tuesday. Interestingly, two of them, Ousmane Barro and Vlad Moldoveanu, play for Cluj-Napoca while a third one, Primoz Brezec, was their opponent on Tuesday. The others are Nenad Delic, Damian Hollis, Janari Jöesaar, Nemanja Milosevic and of course Daniel Mullings.

4 – The players who scored 20 points or more. Strahinja Micovic topped them all with his 25 points on a night that was characterised by team effort on the offensive end, as seven of the 16 teams had at least four players scoring in double digits.