Draw on 7 July, from 13 September the battle to enter the group stage. Vazzoler: “We have a historical legacy”
/ TREVISO
Cup nights are back at Palaverde. European, of course. It is not the Eurocup and patience. But as a freshman who will look abroad for the first time, the Champions League is also fine. Yesterday the official announcement arrived: Treviso Basket will make the Cup starting from the preliminaries with 23 other teams (the best known are Peristeri, Spalato, Bamberg, Le Mans) from which the 4 will come out and will enter the group stage, where 28 await them. already qualified. TvB will start on 13 September, while the group season will start on 4 October. The initial draw for the qualifying rounds and the group stage of the Regular Season will take place on Wednesday 7 July at 11 am, at the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball in Geneva. There could be the danger of overlapping with the enlarged Super Cup, the Final Four of which will be on September 19, a week before the start of the championship: “In fact, the risk exists, we are waiting to know what the qualifying formula will be”, says the ds Andrea Gracis.
The president of TvB Paolo Vazzoler, on the other hand, expresses his satisfaction with the debut in Europe as follows: “It is a great source of pride for our young club to have received the trust of Fiba that admitted us to the Champions League after the sixth place in the last season. In addition to Sassari and Brindisi, already protagonists in Europe in recent years, only us have been chosen unlike other realities, confirming how the name of a city that has left an important “legacy” in the history of European basketball, combined with seriousness of our project and its interpreters, were the right levers to reach this new step for our organization. We must thank Fiba for the trust they have placed in us, now our task is to continue our growth and demonstrate on and off the pitch that we deserve this new and stimulating dimension. I absolutely do not want this to be a point of arrival, but on the contrary I see in this first European landing only the beginning of a new phase for our club and for our city, with the pride of having brought back in less than ten years Treviso basketball from the Promotion Championship to Europe ».
If Treviso Basket manages to pass the preliminaries, the regular season rounds will consist of 4 participants (8 groups). Sassari and Brindisi already qualified with the Greek Aek, Paok and Lavrio; the Israeli Hapoel Jerusalem and Hapoel Holon and the Spanish Burgos, Manresa, Tenerife and Unicaja; the French Dijon and Strasbourg and the German Oldenburg and Ludwigsburg; the Turkish Besiktas, Tofas Bursa, Galatasaray, Darussafaka Tekfen and Pinar Karsiyaka, the Belgian Oostende, then Ostrów Wielkopolski (Poland), VEF Riga (Latvia), Nymburk (Czech Rep.), Szombathely (Hungary), Igokea (Bosnia), Nizhny Novgorod (Russia) and Rytas Vilnius (Lithuania). The first classified of each of the 4 groups will qualify directly to the 16th, while the second and third classified will compete in a series to the best of the 3 and the 8 winners will get the passage to the second round. The quarter-finals will be played again at best of 3, to finally arrive at the Final Four. Up for grabs one million dollars: it is the prize that will go to the winning team. In addition to glory.