Seven months’ worth of jam-packed action between the best teams on the Old Continent is set for blast off with the release on Friday of the EuroLeague calendar for the 2017-18 season.
The new calendar promises to build upon the countless thrills of last season as once again every single EuroLeague club and star will visit each of the others, giving fans everywhere the opportunity to witness their teams competing against the very best of European basketball.
The season starts on October 12 and the highlights of the opening week are the clash between the reigning EuroLeague champion Fenerbahce Dogus faces and last season’s EuroCup champions Unicaja Malaga, as well as the superpower showdown such as Barcelona taking on Panathinaikos in round one.
Among the many highlights going forward in the new schedule are rematches between last year’s finalists, champion Fenerbahce and runner-up Olympiacos Piraeus, in Round 7 and Round 21, or battles among other two most recent champions Real Madrid and CSKA Moscow in round two and also again in round 21.
Such iconic matchups that are the new normal throughout a 30-round regular season that lasts until April 6. Along the way, there will be five weeks of double rounds in which teams play two games each, giving fans four consecutive days of non-stop EuroLeague excitement, something unprecedented until the change of format last season.
In some of those double weeks fans will see powerhouse confrontations between ex-champions like CSKA vs. Panathinaikos or Zalgiris Kaunas vs. Real Madrid later in October, traditional EuroLeague rivals, former champion Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv go against Anadolu Efes in November, or Baskonia facing one of its fellow Spanish rivals Barcelona in late December.
The eight best teams from the regular season will take it up a notch and battle for supremacy in best-of-five playoffs from April 17 to May 1. Those series winners will then have the honor of competing to become the continental champions when the EuroLeague Final Four takes over Belgrade, Serbia, for a weekend from May 18 to 20, 2018.
