Euroleague is an annual basketball tournament held in a complex multi-stage scheme. Its goal is to identify the top four among the 38 strongest club teams of the old world, between which the final series of games is then held. It is called the Final Four and takes place every year in different cities and countries. This spring, the Euroleague final took place in Istanbul, Turkey, and Moscow's CSKA Moscow, the strongest basketball club in Russia, made its way again.
Instructions
Step 1
CSKA started the Euroleague group stage in mid-October last year with an away meeting with the Lithuanian Zalgiris. The champion of Russia did not experience any problems in this game and won by 13 points - 87:74. Then the army team consistently beat all six rivals in the group both in away and in home matches. The domestic grand has experienced some difficulties at this stage only twice - in the away games with the Greek Panathinaikos (78:76) and with the German club Bamberg, modest by European basketball standards (81:78). CSKA took first place in the group, although to reach the next stage it was enough not to get to one of the last two places.
Step 2
The last meeting of the group stage took place before Christmas, on December 21, and almost a month later the next stage of the tournament began - the Muscovites beat another Greek club, Olympiacos from Piraeus. At this stage, CSKA played in a group where, besides the Greeks, there were two Turkish teams - Galatasaray and Efes Pilsen. One of them - "Galatasaray" - the army team and lost for the first time in the Euroleague 2011-2012. This happened in early February, but did not affect the outcome of the struggle in any way - having won all other meetings, CSKA became the first in the final table.
Step 3
In the next stage - the quarterfinals - the teams played up to three wins of one of them. The rival of the Muscovites was the Spanish club Bilbao Basket, which managed to beat CSKA only once. It was the third match in the series won by the army team with a total score of 3: 1, which gave them a ticket to the Final Four. The rivals of our club in the semifinals were the Greeks from Panathinaikos, who were defeated twice in the group stage, who could not resist this time either. However, the game was very difficult - the army team had to recoup three quarters and only in the last one did they catch up with their rivals and snatched a victory with a difference of only two points (66:64).
Step 4
The final match between CSKA and Olympiacos took place on May 13 at the Sinan Erdem Dome stadium in the Turkish capital. And the army team beat this Greek team twice at the preliminary stage, but, alas, the final match became a mirror image of the semifinals. In it, the champion of Russia was leading in the score for three quarters, and in the final there was a disaster - the Muscovites could not keep the advantage of 13 points. Having lost the last quarter with a score of 8:22, they ended the match with a difference of one point not in their favor - 61:62.
