Table of pairings of the Copa del Rey. /
Basketball
Barça will begin the defense of the title against Baxi Manresa, while Real Madrid will face Río Breogán in quarter-finals that complete the duels Joventut-Lenovo Tenerife and Valencia Basket-UCAM Murcia
The draw for the Copa del Rey basketball game, which will be played from February 17 to 20 at the Granada Municipal Sports Palace, opened the doors to a new reissue of the classic in the final. Barcelona will begin, on Friday the 18th, the defense of the title it won last year in Madrid against Baxi Manresa in the quarterfinals, while Real Madrid, the current runner-up, will begin their assault by facing the Río Breogán in another of the star eliminatory rounds, which It will be held on Thursday the 17th.
Joventut-Lenovo Tenerife (Thursday 17) and Valencia Basket-UCAM Murcia (Friday 18) complete the list of pairings in the quarterfinals determined by the lottery held this Monday in the Granada Science Park auditorium with the presence of Francisco Cuenca , mayor of the Nasrid city; José María Arrabal, general secretary for sport in the Junta de Andalucía, and Antonio Martín, president of the ACB.
Located in different parts of the table, the crosses would allow a hypothetical final between Real Madrid and Barça, who have met in eight of the last twelve duels with the title at stake and hoard 54 trophies, with the whites as leaders of the historical record thanks to his 28 conquests, two more than those that the azulgranas have fastened.
Sarunas Jasikevicius’ men, however, won the last edition, played in Madrid, by beating Pablo Laso’s pupils 88-73 in the decisive match. A victory that elevated Cory Higgins as MVP and allowed the Catalans to recover the title they had lost a year earlier, when Real Madrid was proclaimed champion of the edition played at the Martín Carpena in Málaga by beating Unicaja, the host, in the final of the tournament.
insured morbidity
Now Real Madrid will begin their race to lift their twenty-ninth Copa del Rey by facing Río Breogán, who are returning to an event in which they have not participated since 1990. Thirty-two years after that sole appearance among the best, the team from Lugo will face the stake with the Croatian Veljko Mrsic, recent replacement of Paco Olmos, in command from his bench.
A little less time, 18 years, has passed since Baxi Manresa played the Copa del Rey for the last time, in the edition held in Seville in 2004. The team coached by Pedro Martínez sealed their ticket on matchday fifteen of the Endesa League, but now he would have to overcome a colossus so that his return would not be ephemeral. Barça, second in the Endesa League and also in the Euroleague, presents itself as a titanic opponent for Bages, whose background in the Copa del Rey can be summed up in four appearances, with the semi-finals they reached in Valladolid 1998 as the top.
Joventut, third in the Copa del Rey record with eight conquests, will be present in the Copa del Rey for the twenty-eighth time in its history, after closing the first round as third-placed in the Endesa League. But the Lenovo Tenerife, commanded by the ex-Verdinegro Marcelinho Huertas, will be a tough stumbling block for the team led by Carles Durán.
The tie between Valencia Basket and UCAM Murcia is also very open. The Murcian team has already participated in the KO tournament once, although it did so as host. But this time the team that Sito Alonso protects made history by getting into the top eight in their own right and will sell their skin dearly against Joan Peñarroya’s team.
It will be the third time that Granada hosts the basketball Copa del Rey, which already hosted the final phase in 1992, when Estudiantes lifted the title after defeating CAI Zaragoza in the final, and in 1995, decided in favor of Baskonia.
