The story so far: Kataja steamrolled Södertälje 97-58 in the first leg in Finland and, barring a historical upset, they are to seal on Thursday their passage to the Regular Season of the Basketball Champions League.

SÖDERTÄLJE KINGS vs. KATAJA BASKET - Thursday at 19:00 CEST

SÖDERTÄLJE (Basketball Champions League) – The Tuesday encounter is the rare kind of game that both teams will actually do well to forget about as soon as possible. The vast win could lead Kataja to excessive self-confidence while Södertälje need to turn the page, re-group and look at the season ahead.

Unless of course if you are Daniel Mullings, because his first official game with Kataja will be one the American guard will treasure for ever.

With that in mind, the only question is whether Södertälje can possibly hope to overturn the huge deficit, and the answer is that no team has ever performed such a feat at this level in Europe. The closest precedent took place in the ancestor of the Basketball Champions League, the European Champions’ Cup, back in autumn 1986. Olimpia Milano lost at Aris Thessaloniki by 31 points on the road and a week later they defeated the Greek side 83-49 in Italy.

“I told my guys that if we could recover one point per minute, we would win by 40 points,” the legendary coach Dan Petersen who was at the helm of the Italian champions at the time had famously said after that historical night almost four decades ago.