Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv host Barcelona in Group E of the Euroleague Top 16 on Thursday as both team’s will showcase their strengths in the same area of the court.
Both teams own 1-1 records in the group as Ante Tomic, Justin Doellman and Maciej Lampe, all face the tough mission of guarding Alex Tyus and Sofoklis Schortsanitis, the latter of whom had a season-best performance in the win last week against Red Star.
Maccabi look to hand a debut Joe Alexander, who signed for the Israeli champions on Christmas Eve. Barca will be without Brad Oleson, who has been sidelined for three weeks with a sprained ankle ligament.
Also in Group E, ALBA Berlin look to make it two wins from two against the two most famous sides in Spanish basketball when they host Real Madrid at the O2 World.
In week 1, ALBA comfortably beat Barcelona, but coach Sasa Obradovic expects this week’s opposition to be tougher.
“The game against Real Madrid will be more difficult than the game against Barcelona, because they play with more skilled perimeter players than the Barcelona team, which we played two weeks ago,” Obradovic said. “They have several players on the perimeter, which can kill you with their shooting within a couple of minutes.
“We need 40 minutes of full focus to keep the game open. First of all we have to find a better start into the game on Thursday than in our recent games, where we too often suffered from a bad start.”
In Malaga, two teams will look to collect their first win of the Top 16 at the third attempt, when Unicaja face EA7 Milano in Group F on Friday.
The Liga Endesa leaders will look to take advantage of their height advantage with Caleb Green and Will Thomas at power forward, and two centers, Vladimir Golubovic and Fran Vazquez, who can score, rebound and block shots.
Vazquez faces another great shot blocker, Shawn James, while Golubovic has a strong test against Samardo Samuels.
Thursday:
Anadolu Efes vs CSKA Moscow
Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv vs Barcelona
ALBA Berlin vs Real Madrid
Friday:
Fenerbahce vs Olympiacos
Laboral Kutxa vs Nizhny Novgorod
Panathinaikos vs Zalgiris
Red Star Belgrade vs Galatasaray