08 October, 2019
04 October, 2020
24 Charles Galliou (DIJO)
04/10/2020
News
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The inevitability of a Dijon-Zaragoza face-off and other things to watch in the 3rd place game

ATHENS (Greece) - JDA Dijon and Casademont Zaragoza did battle for first place in Group D until the final day of the Regular Season and perhaps fittingly, in spite of everything that has changed since then, they will face off on the final day of the longest season ever.

Rasheed Sulaimon, who played for Dijon until the hiatus and signed gor Zaragoza in the summer, will not step out in Sunday's game due to an injury he picked up in Friday's Semi-Final and Sagaba Konate will take his place on the Spanish team's 12-man squad.

  • The two teams were in the same Regular Season group and the Spanish side won both games, including a 105-73 win on the road which is Dijon's biggest defeat in the competition.

  • This will be the 24th game between a French and a Spanish team in the BCL. Spanish teams have won 14 of those games, while the teams from France won eight and there was one tie.

  • Dijon have a 1-4 record against Spanish teams in the BCL. The French side have lost the three most recent games against teams from Spain and didn't score more than 75 points in any of them.

  • Dijon average 5.3 steals per game since the season resumed in September with their Round of 16 clash with Nizhny Novgorod, after being the only team in the league averaging more than 10 steals per game up until the hiatus.

 

  • Dijon average 8 offensive boards and 31.2 total rebounds per game, and they are bottom of the league in both those stat categories. Nonetheless, the French team collected at least 11 offensive rebounds in each of their three September games. Dijon had collected more than 11 offensive boards only in three of their previous 16 games.

  • Zaragoza on the other hand average a league-high 29.2 defensive rebounds per game. However, the Spanish team were out-rebounded by AEK on that end of the floor in the Semi-Final.

  • Zaragoza made exactly 20 free-throws in each of their previous two games at the Final 8. The Spanish side shot 83 percent from the stripe in these two games in Athens, after shooting 65 percent from the line in their previous 16 games in the league.

 

  • Dijon captain Axel Julien is averaging 13.7 points and 7.0 assists per game in the September three-game span, up from 9.6 points and 5.3 assists per game in his previous 16 games in the league. Julien in fact is the Final 8 joint leading scorer going into Sunday's games, as he and AEK's Keith Langford have scored 36 points each.

  • Zaragoza's Nicolas Brussino averages 14.8 points per game in the BCL since the start of 2020, after averaging 8.8 points per game throughout 2018 and 2019 (he spent 2018 and part of 2019 at Tenerife). The Argentinian forward has scored 12 or more points in eight of his last nine BCL games.