Look of familiarity to BBL final four

LIMBAZI - By defeating Ventspils in the second game of their best-of-three quarter-final series on Monday night, Lietuvos Rytas rounded out the Baltic Basketball League (BBL) Final Four participants for 2012. Joining Lietuvos Rytas in the Final Four of the Baltics’ premier Baltic-wide basketball competition are reigning champions Zalgiris Kaunas, fellow Lithuanian club Siauliai and the solitary non-Lithuanian team, VEF Riga.
Lietuvos Rytas, Zalgiris and VEF all competed in last season’s Final Four in Kaunas, whilst Siauliai return to the climax of the season following a one year absence.

Due to their commitments in European-wide competitions, the Russian-based VTB League and their respective domestic leagues, Latvian domestic champions VEF, the Baltics’ only Euroleague team Zalgiris and Lithuanian domestic league runners-up Lietuvos Rytas were all granted direct access to the quarter-final stage of the BBL, where they were joined by the top five finishers from the regular season.

On account of winning last year’s competition, Zalgiris were theoretically handed the easiest path into the Final Four by being placed in a best-of-three series against the fifth and final qualifiers from the regular season, Rudupis.
However, last season’s surprise bronze medalists in the Lithuanian domestic league made sure that Zalgiris’ access into the Final Four did not come without some minor bumps in the road, upsetting Aleksandar Trifunovic’s men 95-87 in game one of their series on March 21.

But the green-and-whites quickly recovered, easily taking games two and three by 17 and 18 points on March 23 and 28, respectively, to ease into the semi-finals as they seek to become the only team to make the final of the BBL every year since the competition’s inception back in 2004.
When Lietuvos Rytas came up against Latvian club Ventspils in the second of the quarter-final clashes, one team was going to be returning to the Final Four at the expense of one of the other teams to compete in last year’s season-ending tournament.

The last time the two teams met was in last year’s bronze medal game when the red-and-blacks narrowly defeated Ventspils by four points. However, this time round the result was a little more convincing as Aleksandr Dzikic’s men became the only team to move through to the Final Four in two games, winning game one on March 23 by a 20-point margin and the second on Monday night by 10 points.
After shocking Lietuvos Rytas in last year’s semi-finals to become surprise finalists, VEF looked on track to return to finals weekend with a comfortable nine-point win over Estonian domestic champions Kalev/Cramo in the first game of their quarter-final series on March 22.

However, controversy ensued in game two of the series in Tallinn on March 24 when on first take it appeared that Curtis Millage had wrapped up the series for VEF with a buzzer-beating three-pointer, only for the referees to overturn the call following much deliberation, and instead reward the guard with two points, effectively sending the game into overtime at which stage Aivar Kuusma’s team prevailed to send the series back to Riga for a third and deciding game.
In the final game of the series on Saturday, Kalev/Cramo remained in the game for three quarters, but in the final 10 minutes the guests faded as VEF veterans Sandis Valters and Kristaps Janicenoks combined for 18 last-quarter points to ease Ramunas Butautas’ team to a six-point win.

Had Kalev/Cramo won, it would have been the Tallinn-based club’s first ever journey into the semi-finals and mark the first appearance of an Estonian club in the pinnacle weekend of the season since 2009.
In the fourth of the quarter-final match-ups, regular season winners Siauliai were effectively handed a free ticket to the finals after regular season runners-up, Triumph withdrew from the series after winning game one 84-76 on March 10.
Soon after winning the first game in the series, the Moscow-based club unexpectedly qualified for the Final Four of Europe’s third-tier club basketball competition, the Eurochallenge, knocking the heavily favored Spanish club Fuenlabrada out of the competition at the quarter-final stage.

With the Final Four weekends of both the Eurochallenge and the BBL scheduled to take place on the same dates, Triumph, which was appearing in the BBL for the first time, instead opted to participate in the Eurochallenge tournament.
The Final Four will take place on the last weekend of April with a venue still to be decided upon. Currently the cities of the Final Four competitors (Kaunas, Vilnius, Riga and Siauliai) are in the running to host the competition alongside the Lithuanian seaside city of Klaipeda, which is aiming to become the first neutral city to host the tournament since Tallinn claimed the honor back in 2006.