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Tomorrow lunchtime (1300 CET) the Turkish Airlines Euroleague Top 16 draw will take place in Barcelona, as the competition travels rapidly towards the Final Four in Istanbul.

While most Euroleague basketball fans know the procedure of what happens in the Top 16, there might be some who are not quite so sure, so we will fill you in.

The 16 teams that have advanced from the group stages have been seeded and they go as follows…

1 SEEDS – Fenerbahce, CSKA Moscow, Real Madrid and Barcelona

2 SEEDS – Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Maccabi Electra and Montepaschi Siena

3 SEEDS – Bennet Cantu, Unicaja, Anadolu Efes and Unics Kazan

4 SEEDS – Gescrap Bilbao, Zalgiris, EA7 Milano and Galatasaray

Four successive draws will be made, starting with the 1 seeds working their way down to 4.

Restrictions.

1) Teams from regular season play may not coincide in the same Top 16 group.

2) An effort will be made to limit the maximum number of teams from the same country coinciding in the same Top 16 group to two.

Restriction 1 takes priority over Restriction 2.

Procedure.

– As said earlier, four draws will be made, starting with the 1 seeds.

– For each spot drawn, the pot will be emptied and refilled with only the teams from the seed drawn, taking the above restrictions into consideration.

– Same regular season group? When drawing teams from the 2 seeds through to the 4 seeds, only those teams from a different regular season group than the ones already drawn in the Top 16 group will be put into the pot.

– Same country? If a spot to be drawn into a group where there is already a team from a specific country, teams from that country will not be put into the pot. The exception will occur if this would then cause a blocked situation in a different group that is still to be drawn, in which case the team(s) from the same country or countries will be placed in the pot. Also, if a certain team(s) cannot be drawn into a different group that is still to be drawn because this would then block said group, this team will be the only one placed in the pot.

– As a result a team may be placed directly into a Top 16 group in order to follow the restrictions.

Teams will play twice both home and away. The top two teams will qualify for the quarter-finals and the bottom two will be eliminated.