Today, the Latvian championship team “VEF Rīga” will play the last game of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Champions League subgroup tournament, visiting the Sombathay “Falco”. The match will start at 21:00 Latvian time, broadcasting it live on TV3 Sport Open.
The people of Riga have already secured a place in the “play-in” tournament, where they will compete with the French club Dijon JDA in January. By defeating today’s opponents, they can prevent the Falco team from immediately entering the Top 16 phase, where the winner of the group will automatically take their place. Treviso’s NutriBullet and Athens AEK will meet in the second Group D game. Before the last round, the leader of the group with four victories is the Hungarian team, three successes for the Italian team, two for the Latvian champions and one for the Greek club. In the first round, the Falco team won the match in Riga with 80:74.
Due to injuries, Rielens Railie, the author of the previous game’s winning basket, as well as Alexander Madsen and Reison Hemondss will not help the Rigans. “VEF Rīga” has become the leader of the Latvian-Estonian Basketball League after winning the weekend over its principal opponent “Ventspils”, winning 12 out of 13 matches in this tournament. Falco are also the first in the local championship and have accumulated the same balance, but suffered their first loss in the Hungarian championship three days ago.
In the regular tournament, 32 teams are divided into eight subgroups of four units each. The winners of the sub-groups will immediately secure a place in the first round of the play-off, where they will be joined by eight more units, which will be determined in the play-in series between the second and third place teams in the group.
It is planned that the winners of the play-in tournament, the eighth final and the quarterfinals will be determined in a series of up to two victories. The teams that make it to the quarterfinals will enter the Final Four, where they will compete for a prize pool of one million euros. The team of “VEF Rīga”, which is participating in this competition for the third season, reached the second stage of the main tournament of the FIBA Champions League last season.
This season, the team led by Jānis Gailītis for the FIBA Champions League includes Artis Ate, Raivo Butirins, Ron Curry, Ilya Gromov, Maris Gulbis, Reison Hemond, Emil Krumins, Alexander Madsen, Anrijs Miška, Pēteris Pinnis, Džeilils
The Spanish club “San Pablo” of Burgos triumphed in the finalist tournament in Nizhny Novgorod in May, defending the title won last year. In 2020/2021, the fifth season of the tournament was played. In the first three years, basketball players from Tenerife’s Lenovo, Athens AEK and Bologna’s Segafredo Virtus were crowned champions.
