Two days into BCL Season 6 ... new name? Benite Colson League
Two days into BCL Season 6 ... new name? Benite Colson League
Basketball Champions League with a breathtaking start to Season Six - BCL already twice tweets new ideas for name change - Let's go with Benite Colson League!
What a start to the 2021-22 Basketball Champions League season! Two days and eight games in and it was hard to fall asleep after so much electricity and buzz. There was drama and thrills througout continent - enough for a new name suggestion for the league.
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The Basketball Champions League made a bold promise in their YouTube trailer for the 2021-22 campaign - writing “Season 6 will be 🔥”. Well, two days and eight games into the new season and the BCL clubs - and especially the league’s superstars - are making sure the bold statement rings true.
The BCL changed their scheduling for the season to feature a Game of the Week on Monday night - pushing the schedule out over three evenings along with Tuesday and Wednesday. And the curtain opener was two-time reigning champions Hereda San Pablo Burgos facing off against Bestiktas Icrypex. The title-holders may have lost their head coach Joan Penarroya as well as big man Jasiel Rivero (both off to Valencia Basket), Thad McFadden and Omar Cook, but they kept a strong core of Vitor Benite, Alex Renfroe, Dejan Kravic and Xavi Rabaseda. And they added Tyrus McGee, Daniel Diez, Suleiman Braimoh, Aleksej Nikolic, Steve Zack and Kristian Kullamae with Zan Tabak taking over on the sidelines.
Benite was the 2021 Finals MVP for his magical performance at the Final 8 last season in Nizhny Novgorod. And the Brazilian magician picked up where they he left as he collected 27 points including 5 three-pointers, 2 rebounds and 4 assists in an 82-74 win at home over Besiktas.
Sure, Benite’s numbers are pretty impressive on their own, but take a look at how he ended the game - thanks to the great Igor Curkovic for this knowledge drop:
The Benite performance was so electric that the BCL itself tweeted the thought of re-naming the league to the Benite Champions League.
Benite may have been named the Finals MVP but the 2020-21 season Most Valuable Player was Bonzie Colson of SIG Strasbourg. Instead of returning to France, Colson changed colors and joined the 2021 finalists Pinar Karsiyaka in hopes of getting the title - Strasbourg lost in the Semi-Finals to Burgos last season and then lost the Third Place Game to Casademont Zaragoza.
And Colson showed on Gameday 1 that he is not only on the hunt for a BCL crown but back-to-back MVP trophies. In a game that made you thank those who made the BCL draw, Karsiyaka started the season on the road at Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem, who have title aspirations of their own with the likes of Anthony Bennett, Thon Maker, Sean Kilpatrick, Kaiser Gates and Retin Obasohan implementing the game plan of new head coach Oren Amiel - who did just about all he could at ERA Nymburk.
Jerusalem and Karsiyaka battled all game - the biggest lead was seven points and there were 25 lead changes - and Colson came up huge. And huge is a massive understatement. With his team down five with 69 seconds left, he came up with a three-point play. And then he threw down a massive put-back dunk with 24 seconds left. It was actually his second hammer put-back of the game.
Jerusalem failed to put the game away - as Kilpatrick split two free throws and Bennett committed an offensive foul off an unsportsmanlike foul. And then Gates missed both free throws with 8.0 seconds and the Israeli side up 84-83. Once Colson grabbed the rebound, you had to think back to Gameday 1 of last season when Bonzie sent the great announcer Jeff Taylor into utter delirium … (VEF Riga fans, sorry about bringing back these bad memories) …
… so back to Karsiyaka and Jerusalem and Bonzie Colson about to do Bonzie Colson things … (sorry Jerusalem fans - the hurt is still fresh so maybe it’s best to skip past the highlight).
In case you missed it in the text of the tweet … “BCL STANDS FOR BONZIE COLSON LEAGUE!!!!!! 🔥🔥”. Maybe they are really looking for a new name. Taking a look at those two games alone, maybe we can offer up the “Benite Colson League”.
Tuesday’s Gameday 1 action featured plenty of more drama - including Tofas Bursa beating Filou Oostende, Igokea knocking off PAOK - thanks to 20-year-old Dalibor Ilic and 22-year-old Aleksa Radanov - as well qualifiers Nutribullet Treviso and U-BT Cluj Napoca both grabbing victories and MHP RIESEN Ludwigsburg rolling past Banco di Sardegna Sassari. But Tuesday also had Lavrio Megabolt fend of BCL mainstays JDA Dijon 65-63 for their first-ever BCL win.
The Lavrio victory combined with Karsiyaka’s thriller over Jerusalem brought up a question.
The Basketball Champions League over its first five seasons seems to have been full of thrilling games. Is that really true though? And how does the BCL compare to the 7DAYS EuroCup - the league the BCL is often battling with for supremacy in Europe as the second-best league behind the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague.
Sure, close games is not the only way to decide if a league is thrilling but looking at the number of tight contests can at least help one see how things might stack up. And looking at games decided by three points or fewer since 2016-17 - the Basketball Champions League’s first season of existance - the numbers do show that the BCL has provided its fans with more late-game drama than the EuroCup. There were more games decided by three-pointers or fewer in each of the first four seasons in the BCL than the EuroCup with the EuroCup having more such games in 2020-21. And the percentage of total games was higher for the BCL in 2016-17, 2018-19 and 2020-21.
In terms of games decided by one point, the Basketball Champions League had a clear advantage over the EuroCup. There were a total of 69 such games in the BCL in the past five seasons - with the lowest percentage of games at 4.8% in 2019-20. That was the highest percentage in any season for the EuroCup (2018-19) as the total number over the five-season span was 27 - with 9 thrillers in that 2018-19 being the high.
All these storylines from just eight games … man, what a start to the season for the Basketball Champions League … er, the Benite Colson League. Or maybe we will have a new suggestion after the rest of Gameday 1 games on Wednesday.
Stay tuned.