UCAM enters Belgrade in the final cycle of its dream | The truth

UCAM returns to a territory, that of a four-way final with two single-match eliminators, in which anything can happen. In 2018 he had his first experience in Athens, when he had to face the host and eventual champion, AEK, in a hostile and packed OAKA. In Belgrade the atmosphere will be very different. The dark interest of FIBA ​​in bringing the 'Final Four' to a country that has not had a single participant this season in the Champions League, announcing it before the four semi-finalists were known, and with Svetislav Pesic as master of ceremonies , gives rise to many wildcat speculations.

The Serbian coach, who coached Barça (two stages), Valencia and Girona in our country, is the Serbian coach and the next coach of the new Dubai team that will join the Serbian league next season and has an agreement to join the Euroleague in the short term, after passing through the EuroCup, if the Euroleague partners do not prevent it first against all odds. A EuroCup, by the way, for which there is strong speculation of a very soon merger with the Champions League.

In case anyone wants to tie together the loose ends of this story that has led to three Spanish teams and a Greek team playing for the title in a country that, no matter how much basketball it breathes, has no roots in a competition that, compared to the caviar Euroleague basketball played by the local Red Star and Partizan, is a white label.

The best UCAM ever

Be that as it may, the big dance is already here and hope prevails over all suspicion. The best UCAM in history has the second milestone of the three presences it pursues: Copa del Rey, 'Final Four' and 'playoff'. At the moment, and in the absence of a third that is taken for granted, it is already in the best season in its history. He had never won the 19 games he has already had in the Endesa League, the previous time he was in the Sports Classification Cup he was not competing in Europe and, when he saw himself in the 2018 'Final Four', he had not previously won. there was Cup.

But this team wants more. It does not understand dosage but maximum dedication game by game, with one of the most physical and balanced squads in its history, which reaches the decisive stretch of the season by recovering Ludde Hakanson when Troy Caupain is going through his sweetest moment and Howard Sant-Roos continues to set the tone, that in Jonah Radebaugh he has found a total player with which to dose a Dylan Ennis who never hides, who sows terror (sometimes his own) with Rodions Kurucs; that combines the brilliant discovery of Dustin Sleva with the commitment of captain Nemanja Radovic and that, as close to the basket, has reintegrated in time the 'MVP' from the beginning of the season, Simon Birgander, with the talent of the new one, Marko Todorovic, and the milling turner Moussa Diagne.

It is Sito Alonso's best moment as a coach in Murcia, where he will continue until at least 2026 when his seasons at UCAM have now been six, and he has before him the great and quixotic challenge of turning the Unicaja giants into mills, the clearest favorite.

Spanoulis: the legend continues

Before the turn of Murcia and Malaga arrives, at 6:00 p.m. the 'Final Four' will raise the curtain for the first semi-final, which pits Tenerife, two-time champion of the Champions League (2017 and 2022) and candidate to become the only team to win the competition three times (in only eight editions), and to the Greek Peristeri, one of the big surprises of this season.

The only team that has booked a ticket for Belgrade with the home court factor against them in the quarterfinals, leaving the current German champion Bonn at home, and that had to enter a 'top 16' in which they lost their first three games by the 'play-in' route, Peristeri is a team that, apart from former UCAM Joe Ragland, has its great star on the bench, as it is led by Vassilis Spanoulis who retired in 2021 as one of the best European players in history, with three Euroleagues (in all three he was the 'MVP' of the 'Final Four'), ​​a Eurobasket, a world runner-up and a long string of national titles in Greece, where he was first the idol of Panathinaikos and, later, from the eternal rival, Olympiacos, where he reached his best version and established himself as one of the greatest legends of continental basketball.

The morbidity of the black beast: Unicaja is the only team that has won twice at the Palace this year

For UCAM to have gone this far in the Champions League they have had to do many things well. One of them, defending one's own fiefdom, a Palace in which this season no European opponent has won. But the last one who did it, in the quarterfinals of last season, is precisely the one who is facing us today as an obstacle for a place in the final.

And, what's more, that same team is the only one that has defeated UCAM twice at the Palacio, where Valencia has also won. Unicaja did it in the first official match of the season, the semi-final of the Murcia Super Cup (74-79) and, later, in the regular league in the Endesa League (65-88). It has won the last four direct confrontations between the two teams and that gives it the unofficial title of bete noire of Sito Alonso's men, who want to avoid the repóker by playing hidden against a team that, after collapsing in the 'Final Four' of 2023 in which they were hosts, they did it again in a recent Copa del Rey that was also held in Malaga.

The Costa del Sol is very far from the Danube, but the pressure, green and purple crowd dominant in the stands or not, is on the side of Unicaja, who, this time, are expected to emerge king of the Champions League. His favoritism is not in vain: he was the only invitee from the 'top 16' and is the current leader of the Endesa League.

When UCAM found itself in this same scenario in Athens, in 2018, its coach was the one who sits on the rival bench today, Ibon Navarro, who that summer changed Murcia for Andorra until his dismissal in 2022, which was followed by his signing. , weeks later, for a Unicaja in which he replaced, as in Murcia, Fotis Katsikaris.

The UCAM of Navarro, which, like today, had Alberto Miranda as an assistant, is one remembered for its special physical potential, one surely not equaled until this year. Fundamental to the European success of that team was the signing two months before of Augusto Lima, in the second of his three Murcian stages after his Chinese adventure, and who returned to Unicaja last season after his surprising departure from UCAM, month and half after its renewal.