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50 Austin Wiley (TOF)
12/12/2023
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BCL Fantasy tips: Austin Wiley needs a big game

MIES (Switzerland) - The eighth Basketball Champions League season brought along a new challenge, in our official Fantasy game. Every week, we bring you some tips on where to aim so that you can reach the highest possible number of points.

Big game in Turkiye

In Group H, this week could bring a lot of answers in terms of who's in and who's out of the hunt for the Round of 16 and the Play-Ins. At 4-0, Bertram Derthona Tortona travel to Spain to face the 3-1 UCAM Murcia in a game which could give us the group winner with a game in hand.

In the other game, Tofas Bursa have the match point to knock Igokea m:tel out of contention. The team from Turkiye stand at 1-3, with their only win being against Igokea in Bosnia and Herzegovina earlier this season. 


However, the Bosnian champs have their own math exercise. If Igokea win by three points or more, they would own the tiebreaker over Tofas, and could actually knock Tofas out of the Play-In race, potentially.

With so much on the line, you can expect the big guys to come up big. Especially if they missed the first matchup.

Austin Wiley is a 24-year-old center who led the Lithuanian League in rebounding last season, before moving to Tofas. He has been all about consistency since day one in Bursa, but he was not in the lineup in the first game against Igokea.

Since then, Wiley has put up 14.0 points, 9.0 rebounds and 1.7 blocks over three BCL games, for an average efficiency of 20.3. He has been even better in the Turkish League.


Wiley opened up his December account with a massive 30-point, 11-rebound double-double, with 4 blocks and an efficiency rating of 41 against Bursaspor Info Yatirim in the Turkish League.

That was just days after a 16-point, 12-rebound outing against Tortona in the BCL, so he obviously knows how to put up crazy back-to-back games.

Why pick him? Because he just played the worst game of his season so far, held to just 4 points in 24 minutes against Buyukcekmece, and he will be desperate to bounce back as soon as possible.

Igokea are an ideal opponent for such a bounce back game. Even though they defeated Krka on the road in the Adriatic League, Igokea lost the paint points 42-32, and were outrebounded 35-33 by a team they defeated.

In other words, Igokea have their own struggles inside. There could be a lot of opportunities left for a big man to punish them, and that sounds exactly like a job for Austin Wiley in a week where he's searching to regain the fine form he showed at the end of November and early December.