After the great 74:78 victory over Fenerbahce Maccabi Tel Aviv tonight (Friday) at 19:30 for an away game at Andolo Eps, which will be nothing less than a direct battle and a golden opportunity to take a big step towards the playoffs in addition to creating distance and breathing space. Oded Ketch’s team will meet the European champions for the last two years, after being defeated 94:75 by Red Star in Belgrade and they are still looking for an island of stability this season.
In recent years we have seen several versions of Andolo Zero, the one that started the climb that reached its peak in the 2019/20 season and the version after it, the one of the last two years that looks like a team that is closer than ever to the end of a process. Under Argin Ataman, the team became the terror of Europe and quite rightly so. The financial resources are almost unlimited, the signings are flashy and the management of the star-studded staff will ultimately produce basketball to enjoy, only that last year already at the start of the season it seemed that something in the Turkish machine was starting to creak.
Despite one win in the first six rounds, Ataman’s team found the way to balance alongside ups and downs and there were quite a few of those throughout the season. However, there were still games where Andolo looked like the team that terrorized the continent. It can be said that the first signs could be seen in the playoffs of the 2020/21 season where the Turks were dragged into a fifth game against Real Madrid bruised and missing but also full of pride, which could have equaled a place in the Final Four if it weren’t for that tremendous three-pointer by Kronoslav Simon.
Last year’s balance led to the feeling that the champion’s armor is already full of cracks and is bleeding, but then came the series against Ettore Messina’s Milan, which suffered not from a plague of injuries but from an epidemic. Of course, everyone remembers the result of last season: Vasilija Micic’s three-pointer on the buzzer in the semi-finals against Olympiakos, a defensive possession against Real Madrid and a second consecutive win of the Euroleague Cup. So what is different this season? Beyond the changes in the roster, it seems that now somehow the combination of the injuries together with the fact that something there just isn’t clicking yet.
The attack is there, but it can also be argued that this season the Euroleague champion looks more vulnerable than last season, in which, as I remember, the expulsion of the Russian teams meant that Andolo had four losses and two wins that were deleted from its balance sheet and could have produced a different playoff series, assuming that 18 wins would have been enough to enter the eight the first ones. Throughout the current season, in the less good moments and certainly in the losses that in the past it is not impossible that Andolo simply would not have suffered, there was always the feeling that it would be fine, after all, this is Andolo Eps, the Euroleague champion, she had already been in this situation and knew how to win despite a similar situation.
On the eve of the 28th cycle and just like the inconsistency that Maccabi has shown this season in the away games, it seems that on a given evening it is still unknown which version of Andolo Eps we will get, but one thing is certain: this version is wounded and bruised, sometimes not connected and sometimes it simply looks like it is not hungry, and the balance ? For comparison in the 2018/19 season which can be marked as the season of the beginning of the process, Eps finished in last place in the Euroleague and then like the phoenix made the Final Four.
Only in that season in which 30 games were played, at the end of 27 rounds Andolo had a record of 18 wins against 9 losses. In the Corona season (2019/20), the Turkish team’s record was 23 wins against four losses. So, as mentioned, the first drop came with 14:13 and this is when tonight, for the 28th round with a game missing, Ataman’s team comes with a record of 13 wins against 13 losses, the last of which was a defeat to Red Star on Serbian soil.
The Euroleague format changed in the 2016/17 season, and while many teams tried to figure out how to conduct themselves within it, the first expansion to 18 teams arrived, only that two things repeated themselves year after year since the transition to the current format: no team that finished the regular season in first place won the Euroleague, and the second ? In the last seven years, all Euroleague winners qualified for the playoffs the following season.
This statistic raises perhaps the biggest question in Andolo’s case in light of the landings in potential tiebreakers against Red Star Belgrade, Valencia and Saconia. Will the season be historic from the point of view of a reigning champion that finishes the regular season outside the playoffs, or is there still fuel left in Andolo Eps’ tank, which it will probably need Perform a refresh in the squad, to compare the legendary achievement of the Croatian Empire, the dynasty of Yugoplastica Split.