ANTALYA (Turkiye) - The Basketball Champions League field will be set at the end of this week, as 24 teams fight for the last four tickets to the Regular Season.
The Qualification Round includes four tournaments, held at the Gloria Sports Arena in Turkiye.
Who is playing in Tournament 2?
There are six clubs in this tournament, with the same format as in the previous editions of the Basketball Champions League Qualifiers. Four teams will play the Quarter-Finals round, while two await in the Semis.
In Tournament 2, BC Trepca from Kosovo are taking on Keravnos BC from Cyprus, and the winner of that duel meets ERA Nymburk from Czechia in the Semis.
In the other half of the bracket, Kutaisi 2010 from Georgia are up against Patrioti Levice from Slovakia. The Semi-Finals opponent in that part of the draw is Kalev/Cramo from Estonia.
Has anybody played the BCL Regular Season before?
Keravnos BC made their upset run through the Qualifiers in 2020, to play the Regular Season in 2020-21, but their campaign ended in the group stage.
ERA Nymburk took part in seven seasons of the BCL so far, reaching the Final 8 in back-to-back seasons in 2019-20 and 2020-21. Coach Oren Amiel won the Coach of the Year award in 2019-20.
Kalev/Cramo also made the Regular Season, back in 2021-22. They were eliminated in the group stage.
Who are the players to watch in this Tournament?
BC Trepca found a new scoring option in Desmond Cambridge. The 25-year-old spent the last season with Sabah in Azerbaijan and had six games in double digits in the FIBA Europe Cup, leading the way to the Regular Season of that competition.
Jaye Crockett is the most familiar name of the Keravnos roster, career journeyman coming back for another season in Cyprus after putting up 14.3 points and 6.8 rebounds per game for Keravnos a season ago.
Another big guy to keep an eye on - Beka Bekauri. The legend of Georgian club basketball is 33 now, and as a career double-double threat, he is back to Kutaisi 2010 for the first time since 2019-20.
Patrioti Levice went through a lot of changes over the summer, but bringing in Ty Nichols has improved their chances of scoring a lot, as the guard averaged 21.3 points with 5.5 assists in Czechia last season, playing for Usti nad Labem.
Arik Smith will take care of Kalev/Cramo's offense, and keep in mind that he has averaged 13.0 points or more in each of his six European seasons so far, last one being in Torun in Poland, with a career-high 4.6 assists per game.
ERA Nymburk bring back a lot of familiar names, but the biggest one is probably Jaromir Bohacik. A lefty point forward returned to Czechia last season, after three years of testing the waters in Strasbourg and Bamberg. He is the floor general and an Olympian who deserves all the respect on the court.