ATHENS (Greece) - One more game. Just. One. More. Game.
For the players, coaches, and fans of Galatasaray and Unicaja, that will be the thought echoing in their heads like the sound of a ball bouncing in an empty gym.
Of course, the sound of that ball bouncing isn't the only echo to be heard in this Final because the Final itself is already an echo.
The last time a Spanish club attempted to win back-to-back BCL titles, it was a Turkish club standing in their way. The two teams in question that day were, obviously, Pinar Karsiyaka and Hereda San Pablo Burgos in Nizhny Novgorod for the Final of Season 5.
There is also the faint sound of an echo, well, more of a reverb, when it comes to the matchup between these two teams this season. They faced each other in the Round of 16, with the games almost perfectly split and the home side winning on both occasions.
So, what did we learn from those two games and also Friday's Semi-Finals? And what can they tell us about what to expect from today's game?
Let take a look.
You Have To Get Your Feet Wet
If Galatasaray are to have any chance in this game, they will probably need to win the battle for the paint and live or die by what happens when Unicaja shoot the ball from deep.
As we know, Unicaja have the most efficient offense in BCL history at 125 points per 100 possessions, but they do it mainly thanks to the way they score inside the arc - they are the only team this year to have scored 60 percent of their shots from two-point range.
Against Tenerife in the Semi-Final, Gala allowed the Canary Islanders to shoot 29 threes but dominated inside with 48 points in the paint to Tenerife's 30.
When they ended Unicaja's 18-game win streak in Istanbul, they did it by scoring 40 paint points and holding the Andalusians to just 24.
We can almost certainly expect to see Gala show a similar willingness to flood the paint with bodies as we saw in that game, when Cimbombom picked their poison on which perimeter shots to give up.
In that clip above, watch the red and black jerseys swarm into the paint when Dylan Osetkowski slipped the ball screen, then when the ball was forced back outside to Jonathan Barreiro, Galatasaray decided to chase him off the three-point line and live with a midrange pullup.
The risk for Galatasaray when it comes to this tactic is that not only did Unicaja take 34 three-pointers against AEK, but they only made 23.5 percent of them and still won the game.
As we see in that video above, this Unicaja team has shooters and will almost certainly run plenty of off-ball screening actions for the likes of Tyler Kalinoski, but they can still win games when they don't fall.
If they do make those shots, then it could be an uphill battle for Gala.
Run, press, run
When Unicaja leveled the score between these two clubs this season and won the home game in the Round of 16, 97-91, they scored 17 fast break points to Gala's 10.
In the Semi-Final against AEK, they only scored 11 fast break points but Unicaja were absolutely forcing stops and turnovers then running the floor.
They forced 19 AEK turnovers and converted them to 27 points. We know that Unicaja's defense is the catalyst for their offense at the best of times but against AEK in the Semi-Final, they stole the ball six times in the last five minutes of the game.
This was actually a record number of steals in the fourth quarter of a BCL Final Four game.
The first of those steals was by Tyler Kalinoski and you can see it in the video above.
Bryce was looking to post up Kalinoski in transition and Unicaja's sharp-shooter read the pass and came up with the ball. In true Unicaja style, they ran the floor and it was four-man Dylan Osetkowski knocking down the transition three-pointer that really broke AEK in the fourth quarter.
The same elixir could also be a poison for the Spaniards.
Ebuka Izundu made a huge difference for Gala against Tenerife with his ability to be disruptive on the defensive end and rim run in transition the other way.
Unicaja's bigs are used to outrunning every other team's frontline in tranistion, but Yakup Sekizkok might have the only group of bigs in the BCL with the depth of athleticism to challenge them.
Expect the Unexpected
In big games, it's often not the star players or main playmakers who decide the game. They will have the ball in their hands in the clutch moments, but they are also the player the defense is most prepared for.
As we saw in both Semi-Finals, it was the X-Factor players, those that few expected to be pivotal, who perhaps did the most to impact the outcome of the games.
For Unicaja, Tyson Perez came up with huge offensive rebounds, putbacks, and attacked closeouts.
In the same position for Gala, Michael Young nailed huge three-pointers and gave the offense the spacing it needed against Tenerife's disciplined defensive rotations.
So, when we say expect the unexpected, what we are really saying is that the unexpected has become the matchup that we expect to have a decisive impact on this game.
Still not enough detail for you? Fine, click the link, we've also dissected their previous matchups between Galatasaray and Unicaja, earlier this season: