CSKA Moscow let one slip against the Euroleague’s most charmingly enigmatic headache, my regrettable championship pick finally stepped foot in the Land of the Unterrible, and two teams with 8-2 regular season records moved to 1-4 in the Top 16.
The Euroleague’s fifteenth week might not have been its best or most entertaining, but it was certainly the strangest. The league’s top two scoring teams coming in, Madrid and Siena, each played 20-plus points below their season average and left their respective gyms with wins to stay undefeated, while Berlin joined Fenerbahce in notching their first victories of the five-week-old phase.
Maccabi dropped another at Nokia Arena while in Istanbul, Oliver Lafayette put too much knuckle on his finger roll and blew a shot to tie things up with a suddenly-surging Anadolu Efes as Zalgiris jumped even farther off the tracks to move to 1-4, just like their Israeli brethren.
And only three weeks after I trumpeted Russia’s Return To Power, I come to find that both Moscow teams were brought down to Earth in the same week by teams with losing records.
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Then there’s Caja Laboral, who not only saw their seven-game winning streak snapped to ACB foe Barcelona, but then had to watch as tenured shooting guard and fan favorite Brad Oleson returned to Catalunya with their bitter rivals after financial difficulties forced the Basque club to sever ties with the American.
This week’s Power Rankings reflect the week’s wildness, as only a single team maintained their position from last week.
New team at the top. New team at the bottom. Nothing but shufflin’ in between. Onto the rankings we go…
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