MIES (Basketball Champions League) - Group B sees teams from all over Europe, including Spain, Greece, France, Israel, Germany, Italy, Czech Republic and Switzerland.

The latter two, Opava and Fribourg Olympic, will be the underdogs of the group, but they have no problem with it. It is a perfect position for them to challenge the likes of a former champion in Iberostar Tenerife, Italian and Greek greats in Umana Reyer Venezia and PAOK, sharp shooting Nanterre 92 and UNET Holon, and Telekom Baskets Bonn who are already 2-0 in Germany to start the season.

Iberostar Tenerife

The champs of 2017 are back and judging by the team they assembled for Txus Vidorreta this time around, it seems that they will be among the favorites to win the Basketball Champions League crown back.

They lost a number of stars and long time members in Fran Vazquez and Davin White, or the rising international stars like Mateusz Ponitka and Mike Tobey. It would be a tremendous hit for any team, but Canarias aren't just "any" team.

Lucca Staiger is probably already in a catch-and-shoot position while reading this story, Thad McFadden caught fire in his home court debut with 26 points and 6 assists against Cafes Candelas Breogan, and Colton Iverson is just waiting for put-backs down low.

Add to the equation to added motivation that Tenerife have after allowing an upset against UCAM Murcia in the Round of 16 last season, and you get a team that will be fun to watch week in, week out.

Last Season BCL Record: 13-3, Round of 16

Key Additions: Lucca Staiger, Colton Iverson, Nico Brussino, Sebas Saiz, Thad McFadden, Pierre-Antoine Gillet, coach Txus Vidorreta

Key Departures: Mike Tobey, Fran Vazquez, Davin White, Mateusz Ponitka, Rosco Allen, Kostas Vasileiadis, coach Fotis Katsikaris

 

Umana Reyer Venezia

Times are a-changing in Venezia, as their two senators Tomas Ress and Hrvoje Peric are no longer with the team, Ress retiring and Peric signing with newcomers Trieste. But Deron Washington arrives, a forward who put up 11.3 points per game in 122 games in the Italian Championship while wearing shirts of Pistoia, Cremona and Torino.

The painted area now belongs to the most dominant center of the Basketball Champions League, FIBA EuroBasket 2017 winner Gasper Vidmar, and Tomas Kyzlink's shooting touch will surely help Walter De Raffaele's team.

But Venezia's biggest win of the summer is probably the fact that they kept most of their squad intact. MarQuez Haynes and Andrea De Nicolao are still running the point, Julyan Stone is there and ready to help with his defense and size on the outside, Mike Bramos, Stefano Tonut and Bruno Cerella are filling the "two" and "three" positions, and they have a legit MVP contender in Austin Daye.

Roster like that guarantees that they will be closer to their 2016-17 campaign, when they qualified for the Final Four, than to last season, which ended in the Group Stage for them. However, they added a FIBA Europe Cup trophy, meaning they have had two successful European seasons in a row. Third time lucky, chance to win it all in the Basketball Champions League? Why not!

Last Season BCL Record: 8-6, eliminated in Group; won FIBA Europe Cup

Key Additions: Deron Washington, Gasper Vidmar, Tomas Kyzlink

Key Departures: Dominique Johnson, Tomas Ress, Hrvoje Peric

 

Nanterre 92

More fireworks, please! Nanterre 92 will be the same old three-point shooting, alley-oop dunking team that we were used to last season, even without their vocal leaders in Jamal Shuler and Heiko Schaffartzik.

This time around they opted for youth - Dominic Waters is 32, and is the only member of the team that is older than 30, which goes to show that one of the fastest running and gunning teams of Europe is ready to go even faster this season. Keep an eye on Adas Juskevicius. The Lithuanian will be firing at will, his 13-point, 7-assist, 6-rebound debut against Karhu Basket showed just what he is capable of.

Nanterre 92 will have its best batch of basketball between Gamedays 7 and 11. Four of those five games will be played in their Palais des Sports Maurice Thorez arena, perfect for a winning run towards the Play-Offs.

Last Season BCL Record: 9-7, Round of 16

Key Additions: Demetrius Treadwell, Adas Juskevicius, Julian Gamble, Dominic Waters, Haukur Palsson, Jeremy Senglin

Key Departures: Jamal Shuler, Heiko Schaffartzik, Kevin Jones, Jamar Wilson, Johan Passave-Ducteil

 

Telekom Baskets Bonn

Champions of social media, Telekom Baskets Bonn will bounce back from their hot-and-cold last season in the Basketball Champions League. Their 2-0 start to the domestic championship is a sign of a good summer in terms of transfers, and they changed almost the entire team.

Expect a number of highlights coming from Ra'shad James, a man who made us consider adding "floating time" in the boxscore. Also, looking forward to a rendezvous with their former center Julian Gamble, who is now wearing the green-and-white of Nanterre.

Last Season BCL Record: 5-9, eliminated in Group

Key Additions: Shane Gibson, Bojan Subotic, Ra'shad James, Charles Jackson, James Webb, Bo Meister, Jarelle Reischel

Key Departures: Tomislav Zubcic, Julian Gamble, Malcolm Hill, Ron Curry, Jordan Parks, Nemanja Djurisic, Konstantin Klein

 

PAOK

Arguably, the most beautiful offensive sets of the entire Basketball Champions League last season were the ones coming from PAOK. Back in the driver's seat for the next ride is Will Hatcher, meaning this is his third run with the club.

Point guard will most definitely know how to run that offense, and will have a couple of domestic guards helping him out, in Antonis Koniaris and Ioannis Athinaiou, who switched sides this summer, coming from the yellow part of Thessaloniki.

PAOK showed how good they can be with a 5-1 finish to Group Stage last season, winning the third spot in the group, just behind Iberostar Tenerife and MHP Riesen Ludwigsburg. They were eliminated by 6 in the Round of 16, Pinar Karsiyaka proved too much for them.

Last Season BCL Record: 8-8, Round of 16

Key Additions: Yanick Moreira, Ioannis Athinaiou, Darrius Garrett, Malik Pope, Will Hatcher

Key Departures: Ousman Krubally, Vassilis Charalampopoulos, Dimitris Katsivelis, Darnell Jackson, Lucky Jones

 

UNET Holon

The LA Lakers of Israel are back for another stint in the Basketball Champions League. With most of the other Hapoels being in red-and-white, coming from their working class heritage, Holon's Hapoel - which goes by UNET for sponsorship reasons - rocks the purple-and-yellow combination due to the fact that a Laker fan donated jerseys to the club.

The panache of Glen Rice and Tamir Blatt is long gone, but a couple of Joneses and additions of Darion Atkins and Khalif Wyatt, who were in Holon a couple of seasons ago, means that there will be no shortage of highlights and wins this time around. Following their 11 defeats last season, seems that a .500 record is a goal for this season. At least a .500 record!

Last Season BCL Record: 3-11

Key Additions: Shawn Jones, Dequan Jones, Darion Atkins, Khalif Wyatt

Key Departures: Glen Rice Jr., Joe Alexander, Tu Holloway, Tamir Blatt, Tashawn Thomas

 

Opava

CEZ Nymburk's remarkable runs in the previous two renditions of the Basketball Champions League opened up the floor for the second Czech team to check in. And having Opava in a strong European competition is something that the entire country can get behind.

Opava are a unique team in modern basketball, as they will field an all-Czech lineup, without a single foreign player. Four-time champions of Czech Republic were runners-up last season, and point guard Jakub Sirina is in charge of their offense. The 30-year-old was a role player for the national team since 2011, Opava gives him a chance to show what he can do in a leading role.

 

Fribourg Olympic

SP Federale Lugano played in FIBA European Champions Cup in the mid 1970s; Stade Francais Geneve were there in that same period; Pully Lausanne Foxes even went on to defeat Maccabi Tel Aviv 95-92 in 1990-91; Lugano Snakes had a 3-7 record in EuroLeague in 2000-01; and Boncourt even reached the Top 16 phase of the FIBA EuroCup Challenge in 2006.

But Fribourg Olympic's qualification for the Group Stage of the Basketball Champions League comes as probably the biggest success of any Swiss team. Fribourg kept most of their triple-domestic-crown winning team of last season, and Avtodor Saratov, Donar Groningen and Sakarya BSB all learned how good of a squad it is.

Babacar Toure averaged 15.7 points and 10.5 rebounds per game, meaning he will be gunning for a competition double-double as Fribourg enters the Regular Season. Dusan Mladjan can shoot it with the best of them, and Justin Roberson has 20 points in his hands each night.

No matter what happens to their international campaign from now on, they will go down in history as the biggest upset of Basketball Champions League. They can only win out of this experience moving forward!