MIES (Switzerland) - The fourth week of action in the ninth season of the Basketball Champions League concluded on Wednesday, and there were plenty of highlights on a three-game evening across the continent. This is what we learned last night.
Unicaja's 13
Unicaja picked up their 13th win in a row, and they are just two months away from becoming the first team in BCL history to maintain a perfect record throughout the calendar year, as they are now 13-of-13 in 2024.
The way they put up 112 points against Aliaga Petkimspor, like a walk in the park, made them look so scary that the rest of contenders are probably fearing Unicaja is going to make the double when we arrive at the season-ending Final Four in May.
However, there were still other teams with similarly incredible runs. We narrowed it down to four others which were truly memorable.
Telekom Baskets Bonn's 11
Back in 2022-23 there were plenty of hot teams entering the BCL, but not a lot of people pointed their fingers towards Germany. And yet, coach Tuomas Iisalo and the front office created a monster in Bonn.
Telekom Baskets Bonn lost their season opener at home, against Pallacanestro Reggiana. But that was just a warm-up for TJ Shorts II and his teammates, as they then left Karsiyaka 12 points behind before completing the sweep over AEK to make it three in a row.
A pair of road wins in Turkiye and Italy sent them through to the Round of 16, where they went 6-0 against Rytas Vilnius, BAXI Manresa and Bahcesehir College.
The run was just temporarily stopped in the first game of the Quarter-Finals, when SIG Strasbourg stunned them at home, but Bonn rounded out the season with four more wins, meaning they ended the season 15-2, including an 11-game winning streak in the Regular Season and the Round of 16.
Bonn, of course, won the Basketball Champions League that season, and Shorts II became the first player to collect both the MVP of the Season and the Final Four MVP awards in the same year.
La Laguna Tenerife's 12
The 2021 part of the 2021-22 season wasn't exactly what you'd expect from coach Txus Vidorreta and Tenerife. They picked up a 4-2 record in the Regular Season, missing out on top spot in their group (to MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg), and ended up in the Play-Ins.
It looked like their season could be over in January as Karsiyaka defeated them in Game 2 in Turkiye, and forced a do-or-die matchup in Game 3 of the Play-Ins.
But something clicked there for the black-and-yellow club. They held on for a 74-71 win to reach the Round of 16, where they just switched through gears and went 6-0 against Rytas Vilnius, SIG Strasbourg and Falco Szombathely.
They swept Tofas Bursa, albeit by a total of two points in two games combined, to make it back to the Final Four, and Bilbao 2022 turned out to be a memorable experience with wins over Hapoel Holon and BAXI Manresa to send Tenerife back to the top for the second time in this competition's history.
You're calculating the wins and noticing that's 11 in a row, right? Well, #12 happened on Gameday 1 of the following season, and the streak ended a couple of weeks later, as they lost to Peristeri in Greece 88-81.
Another double-digit winning run, same as Unicaja and Bonn, ending up with the spiky trophy in their hands. Same as Unicaja and Bonn.
The Burgos back-to-back
While winning runs are cool, there are cases where a team was so dominant even without a double-digit mark in their longest stretch of wins. In fact, even with all of Tenerife's heroics, they weren't the first two-time champion of the BCL.
That's because Hereda San Pablo Burgos were the team to beat during the pandemic times in Europe. The perfectly built team from top to bottom, with coach Joan Penarroya calling the shots, they had all the ingredients for elimination tournaments, and it started at the Final Eight in Athens in 2020.
AEK looked incredibly tough back then, and as hosts of the event, they were keen on winning another trophy at the OAKA, same as in 2018. However, the trademark Burgos physicality pushed the Queen out of the arena, making them the second Spanish team to win the title.
That just warmed them up for the 2020-21 season, as it started a week or so later, and Burgos kept going without looking back, going 5-1 in their Regular Season group, 4-2 in the Round of 16, and defeating Holon, Strasbourg and Karsiyaka at the Final 8 to become the first and only back-to-back BCL champion.
While there were no 10-game winning streaks, the 2020-21 lineup of Burgos were a team you did not want to meet at any part of the season.
Monaco's 14
There's a yin for Burgos's yang, too. While they did not have a major winning streak, they still won two championships. And then, there's Monaco.
In Season 1 of the BCL, Monaco reached the Final Four, finishing third in San Cristobal de La Laguna, and their Third-Place Game win over Umana Reyer Venezia marked the start of a scary run which went on in Season 2.
The Monstars, as we dubbed Monaco because of their name and the Space Jam villains, defeated Juventus Utena, Hapoel Holon, Enisey Krasnoyarsk, Dinamo Sassari, EWE Baskets Oldenburg, UCAM Murcia, Pinar Karsiyaka, Utena, Holon, Krasnoyarsk, Sassari, Oldenburg and Murcia, before finally losing to Karsiyaka in their last Regular Season game that year.
The run lasted a whole 14 games, and at 13-1, they finished a whole three games ahead of anybody else in that group.
And yet, even with two Final Four appearances and the record 14 wins in a row, Monaco did not win a title in this competition. Later in 2018, they made the Final, but lost to AEK 100-94 in front of 18,000 fans at the OAKA in Athens.
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Quick notes from Wednesday's games
Promitheas Patras BC Vikos Cola have been defeated in their last four games at home in the BCL, after losing only four of their previous 14 games at home in the competition.
Unicaja have now won 13 consecutives games in the BCL, the second longest winning sequence ever in the competition (Monaco W14 between April 2017 and January 2018).
Unicaja scored a BCL club-record 112 points; in fact, it’s the first time they scored 100 or more points in the BCL.
Unicaja scored 34 points in the first quarter, also a club record in a single period of a BCL fixture.
Will Cummings of Galatasaray scored 21 points against Promitheas, a joint-high for him in his 21 appearances in the competition. However, he also committed a BCL career-high 5 turnovers.
Zac Seljaas of Würzburg Baskets is only the third player to have scored more than 22 points in each of his first three games in the BCL (Kyle Guy and TJ Shorts II are the other two). Seljaas has made three or more 3-pointers in each of his appearances so far.
Tyler Kalinoski of Unicaja has now made a total of 124 3-pointers in the BCL, surpassing Vitor Benite (121) and Tyrus McGee (123) to reach 10th spot on the all-time list.
Kendrick Perry, also of Unicaja, has scored 12 or more points in each of his last five games in the BCL, his longest run of +10-point games in the competition.