Eurocup Basketball

By Divol

Hapoel Jerusalem v Alba Berlin



24th March 17:30 GMT

First of all Jerusalem has a great record against the team drawn in this tournament. They beat Jenkins and Bree and Wright and Ostend few years back and beat Alba as well. So almost every season they played this team or one of their key players and always managed to beat them. Second, Jerusalem are simply better. I'm not that big fan of Jenkins to be honest. Saw him few times, nothing special. I believe that while Berlin are better than Jerusalem on defense (like most teams in this cup), Jerusalem are far better on offense. For Berlin to have a shot here, they need to stop Jerusalem on a low score which is a very difficult mission in Jerusalem.

Berlin had so far 4 road wins and two losses in this cup. The thing is, that both losses were by double digits, so this is a team that either wins the game SU or just gets beaten. Jerusalem scored in all their home games 79+ points, all but one game against Pamesa. But  the thing is that Pamesa are a much better team than Alba, on defense as well and Jerusalem weren't looking to run in that match. For this match, Jerusalem's coach comes and declares they will be looking for a high scoring game.  My predicted score is 85 - 72 in favour of Jerusalem. I can see a drop in the margin a bit to 83 - 74, but I will be really surprised to see Jerusalem score below 80 points (79 at the worse) or to see the  margin drop below 6 points.

In two only home losses, Jerusalem scored 16% and 30% from three point line, while the rival team scored 66.6% and 42.3% and in both cases they got punished in the paint (once by Dikoudis and Kakiouzis and once by Perovic). Alba have got only Blagota to punish in the paint and they are really not that great of a team behind the line (not worse than Pamesa, but that team is a whole other level to compare).

Picks:

Jerusalem -6, 1.92 - 5 units play - Pinnacle

Over 154.5, 1.93 - 1 units play - Pinnacle

Divol