MIES (Switzerland) - The Basketball Champions League's Season 9 gets underway in the first week of October. The format remains the same, with the winners of the eight Regular Season groups moving to the Round of 16 directly, while the fourth-placed teams in each group will be eliminated from the competition.
The second and third-placed teams from adjacent groups (E2 vs. F3, F2 vs. E3) will face each other in the Play-Ins, in best-of-three series, with the winner of each of these eight series snapping up the last eight tickets to the sweet 16 phase.
With that kind of a competition system, it's important to know what's going on in the other group, which is why we are previewing the Regular Season two groups at a time.
The favorites
Group E: It's impossible to predict what kind of season the 2018 champions could have, as their ups and downs are sky-high and Mariana Trench low. AEK Betsson BC's last season was a perfect example as their 0-6 Round of 16 record erased all memories of the fact they opened up the campaign on a 5-1 run in the Regular Season, winning their group ahead of MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg, Banco di Sardegna Sassari and King Szczecin.
AEK are one of only three teams in the BCL to have played all nine seasons - alongside La Laguna Tenerife and Filou Oostende - so they deserve all the respect and calling them the group favorites sounds like a solid choice given their history in this competition.
The yellow-blacks' summer was busy as they brought in nine new players, led by a potential MVP candidate in Hunter Hale. The lefty shooting guard left Promitheas Patras and moved 200 kilometers eastbound to the capital, planning to put AEK back in contention.
Group F: Rytas Vilnius are coming in as the champions of Lithuania, and there was no room for complacency in the front office over the summer. Instead, they got stronger.
Strong as an Oak, one might say, as they brought back the man whose name means "oak" in Lithuanian. The 22-year-old Azuolas Tubelis, who averaged 17.5 points and 7.0 rebounds on loan at Neptunas Klaipeda last season, s also the reigning MVP of the Lithuanian League.
The arrivals from overseas were also interesting, with former Telekom Baskets Bonn forward Savion Flagg flying in, along with Jayvon Graves who had a brilliant stint with Ludwigsburg in 2023-24, and Steven Enoch, a high flying center with prior experience of playing in Spain and Turkiye.
Play-Ins as the minimum target
Group E: AEK aren't the only former BCL champions in this group. Telekom Baskets Bonn needed to fight their way through the Qualifiers in September, and that fight was a success, putting them back into the main draw for the sixth time.
Sam Griesel, Till Pape and Thomas Kennedy are returning for another year, while Darius McGhee and Phlandrous Fleming Jr seem to be one of the most lethal one-two punches in all of Europe this year.
Bonn reached the Quarter-Finals last season, narrowly missing out on a spot in the Final Four. Having won the BCL in 2023 and playing a tie-breaking Game 3 last season, they will lean on recent history to find an edge over VEF Riga.
The perennial Latvian champions are playing in the BCL for the sixth time, with their 2021 run to the play-offs marking their longest campaign in the competition so far.
There are hopes they could be back to the Round of 16, especially as they have signed the Ukrainian tandem of Issuf Sanon and Vyacheslav Bobrov, along with American guard Gage Davis, who'll get a chance to prove his worth at this level after averaging 21.3 points and 9.4 rebounds in Denmark in 2023-24.
Group F: Seasons change, the yellow wall of Hungary remains the same. Falco-Vulcano Szombathely are back for their sixth run in the BCL, and just by that fact alone, they should considered to be the main challenger to Rytas Vilnius.
The Hungarian core is back with Benedek Varadi returning to the team after two seasons away, and Zoltan Perl and Akos Keller still there to welcome him back. Longevity is the name of the game for Falco, maybe it pays back with another Round of 16 berth this season.
But Szombathely cannot afford to relax for a second, as Pallacanestro Reggiana are back in the BCL. They have retained their experienced guys such as Jamar Smith and Michele Vitali, and their 19-year-old wunderkind Mouhamed Faye, while Cassius Winston comes in to run the plays as the point guard.
Reggiana were eliminated in the Regular Season in their first run in the BCL, they are hoping to take things further by at least one step this time around.
Here to complicate things
Group E: Maccabi Ramat-Gan are the sixth different team from Israel to compete in the BCL, but their roster offers a lot of names familiar to the competition.
Team captain Adam Ariel played the Final 8 in 2020 with Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem, while Drew Crawford has all the experience in the world, playing the very first BCL season with Ludwigsburg, and also participating with Hapoel Holon last season.
Group F: A very similar description applies also to WKS Slask Wroclaw. It's their first BCL season, but you cannot consider the Polish side to be rookies when they have the likes of Jeremy Senglin and Isaiah Whitehead on board.
If they manage to complicate things, they could become only the second Polish team to reach the Round of 16 in the BCL, after Zielona Gora managed to do it in 2018.