ATHENS (Greece) - Galatsaray showed again that they are a force to reckon with after ending another unbeaten run for a Spanish club in the BCL.
Earlier in the season, they ended Unicaja's record-breaking, 18-game win streak, and now they have ended La Laguna Tenerife's perfect season on their way to the BCL Final.
Let's jump in and have a look at some of the key tactical takeaways from the game.
Sometimes, it really is a coaching chess match
How often do we hear the cliche about a game of basketball being a coaching chess match? Almost certainly way too often because most of the time when people say that, they are really talking about high IQ players making the smart decisions on the court.
In this case, we really did get two coaches making moves on the floor like two players moving chess pieces on the board.
The biggest question for any team facing Tenerife is what to do about Marcelinho Huertas. Galatasaray coach Yakup Sekizkok decided that his answer would be to match up his captain Goksenin Koksal with the Brazilian, and it was a factor.
Txus Vidorreta and Yakup Sekizkok then proceeded to enter into said chess match at the midpoint of the first quarter.
The sequence of events went as follows: 05:35 Huertas > out, 05:29 Koksal > out, 05:59 Huertas > in, 04:31 Huertas > two-point shot made. This game of each coach chasing each others substitutes, with Sekizkok trying to keep Koksal matched up on Huertas, continued like this for the rest of the first quarter.
Eventually, the rotations just settled into the pattern of Koksal being on the floor when Huertas was and using his physicality to impose himself on the Brazilian.
Now, when we say Koksal on Huertas was a factor, Huertas still had 18 points on 7-of-15 shooting, but with three assists and three turnovers, it's impossible to argue that Gala's captain wasn't able to disrupt Huertas' ability to orchestrate his team's offense as he usually does.
Basketball really is a game of runs
Sticking with the theme of time-worn basketball cliches, this game was the perfect illustration of what people mean when they say basketball is a game of runs.
At the end of the first quarter, Txus Vidorreta had already used all four guards on his roster, with the final one to come off the bench being Lluis Costa. And it was Costa who knocked down a buzzer-beater to end the quarter that really started Tenerife off on a 12-0 run.
The Costa buzzer-beater may have triggered the run, but it was Thomas Scrubb making shots at the start of the second quarter, and Tenerife's slick defensive rotations that were the engine powering the run.
When you watch that clip above, watch for Ibou Badji using his length to hedge out aggressively on the pick-and-roll, then Tim Abromaitis and Thomas Scrubb rotating to help on the roller, and then help the helper.
Costa finishes the play by jumping over to steal the ball from a cutting Will Cummings. Tenerife looked for all intents and purposes to have solved Galatasaray.
Basketball rarely works that way, though.
Before the game we knew that the injury to Fran Guerra could be a factor against this deep and athletic Galatasaray frontcourt and it was Ebuka Izundu who caused Tenerife the biggest problems on both ends of the floor.
In the clip above, we see the way Izundu was impacting both ends of the floor with his athleticism and length.
To start the clip we see him hedge and recover on Huertas in the pick-and-roll, buying time for Cummings to recover and challenge the shot.
Then, Gala push the ball as they love to do, Palmer waits for Izundu to set, and then slips the screen, before using his height to see over the defense and hit him rolling to the rim.
This time, the Tenerife rotations aren't as sharp, and Izundu's foot speed sees him catch it deep enough to score.
Izundu then capped off Gala's 12-0 run by switching the pick-and-roll and swatting Jaime Fernandez at the rim. Gala were back in front, in the ascendancy, and the big Nigerian was the reason why.
Izundu finished the game with 21 points and 10 rebounds, becoming the first player to record such a statline in the Semi-Finals, and in the process delivering one of the best performances ever by a big man at a BCL Final Four.
Spanish minutes aren't only for the Spanish
We all know by now about the way that Unicaja and Tenerife make full use of the depth on their rosters by spreading the minutes around, but on this occasion, it was Gala that showed they have the depth to get the job done by spreading the love.
Palmer Jr and Cummings were the only players to spend more than 22 minutes on the floor, with 37 and 32 minutes each, respectively.
Outside that, Coach Sekizkok rotated his squad with precision and kept everyone fresh enough to close the game out in the third quarter and control the game in the fourth.
They won the game 90-80 after shooting 56 percent from the field and 59 percent from inside the arc, mainly thanks to scoring 48 points in the paint.
They held Tenerife to an out-of-character 6-of-29 from deep and 46 percent shooting overall.
Galatasaray will face Unicaja in the Final this Sunday at 20:00 local time (19:00 CET). The two clubs have split their games this season and look set to serve up a fascinating battle.