Perfect season?

Full-house in Sporto Halė at BBL Final. (foto: Fotodiena.lt/R.Dačkus)

 

Basketball season is comming to an end. It's kind of sad though, no more club basketball for whole summer, but in other hand, at summer the most important sport event will happen in Lithuania - EuroBasket 2011. But i will not write about this for now. I will look through the season of the strongest, most respected team in Lithuania - Žalgiris Kaunas.

At the begining of the season Žalgiris looked promising, well-respected coach - Aco Petrovič, new, amazing team, for which we thanked Romanov (aka MadVlad) A LOT. At pre-season Gomelsky Cup we beated Panathinaikos (now in Final 4 of Euroleague) and lost to CSKA after tough fight finishing second...

Season started even more promising than any of us expected. At first few months we lost only once - to Maccabi (which is also in Euroleague final4). 4-1 in Euroleague after first round games, Žalgiris destroyed our arch-rivals from Vilnius by 25 points (85-60) and we were amazingly happy. But then... something happened.. Žalgiris started losing one game after another (although staying unbeaten in Lithuanian basketball league (LKL))..

Žalgiris somehow managed to lose against Ukrainian team Azovmash in VTB league (after this MadVlad let's Petrovič go, new head coach - Rimantas Grigas) also, one after another coming losses in Euroleague, one more loss in VTB against Khimki and it's quite terrible after such a brilliant start. Although Žalgiris got into TOP16, the fans were pissed, the team didin't play basketball like they could. Also, the rumours about MadVlad's "magic piece of paper" on which he wrote which player should play in which minute and "hockey-like" substitutions didin't help at all.

But then, finaly, Žalgiris fans saw the light at the end of the tunnel. New head coach, also respected greek - Ilias Zouros. Although after first Euroleague TOP16 round there were no wins, we saw that Žalgiris game is getting better. That we saw at LKF (Lithuanian basketball federation) cup final four. After quite difficult semifinal (75-73 over Rūdupis) we defeated (81-69) Rytas in final. Titles are going back to Kaunas!

After first title this season, big win in Kaunas - 85-84 against Ulker and the hope to go to Top8 is still alive! Sadly, after that win followed two painful losses and we were out of Euroleague.. It was damn sad after such a wonderful begining of the season but still, what happened - happened, the season is not over yet. We still had VTB in our minds, but something really f*cked up happened and we managed to lose against the same Ukrainian team and didin't make it to VTB Final 4. F*ck.

After that we have only BBL and LKL left. Second LKL fight against arch-rival from Vilnius came and Žalgiris won that easily and in style 74-57. LKL regular season title is in our hands and we start waiting for BBL Final4, which was held in Kaunas. In Semis we easily destroyed team from Latvia - Ventspils (108-55) and started waiting for final game against Rytas. But then the unexpected happened. Rytas lost their semis to another latvian team - VEF Riga. Unusual final, first time ever in BBL without two Lithuanian teams, Žalgiris-VEF. The final was quite difficult, but we won the championship and took second title this season.

BBL champions - Žalgiris Kaunas. (foto: Fotodiena.lt/R.Dačkus)

Third title awaits: after BBL Final 4 we won our last regular season game against Šiauliai (88-78). Žalgiris finished this regular season braking their own LKL record - 24 victories and 0 losses. Only 2 times in regular season we won by less then 10 points (teams who managed to lose by less than 10points: Rūdupis, Perlas. Yeah, not Rytas). Now we are only waiting for 8 more victories (2-4finals against Neptūnas, 2-semis and 4-finals). Then it would be 32-0 for us in all season and LKL champions title in our hands! It's been two years now that Žalgiris didin't win LKL champion and that's too damn long! This year - no chances for Rytas or whoever we will play against!

Yes, maybe it isin't Žalgiris perfect season or the best season in clubs history, but compared to last two (one where Žalgiris was on the verge of bankruptcy), it's pretty damn amazing.

If you have read all this - you are amazing. Thank you and bye till the other blog.

Peace.