Guildford Heat Basketball Club Gain Favourable European Dr..

30th June 2007, Venice, Italy.
Guildford Heat Basketball Club has pulled a rabbit out of the ULEB Cup
with a mouthwatering basketball feast of a draw for their first
European campaign. The Surrey side was drawn against clubs from
nations straight across Europe on Saturday afternoon in Jesolo, a
suburb of Venice.


The Heat were drawn against DKV Joventut of the Spanish ACB league,
often described as the second best league in the world; Alba Berlin of
the German Bundesliga; Turk Telekom Sports Club from Ankara, Turkey;
KK Šiauliai of Lithuania and, intriguingly, KK Bosna of Sarajevo in
Bosnia-Herzegovina.


The draw was attended by the Heat’s Phil Hardy, the club’s Marketing
Director, who had this to say from Venice: “As a fan and marketer I
couldn’t have asked for a better draw. I am quite a fan of the Spanish
ACB and watched DKV Joventut on television all winter and spring. To
know our club will be facing them in action is something I could
hardly have imagined possible, but now I can’t wait. Basketball
purists from around Britain will want to come and see this squad. I’m
equally happy to have drawn Lithuanian and Turkish sides as I know how
passionate those nations regard their basketball and I’m expecting a
rather large demand for tickets from their large expatriate
communities in the southeast. Ditto from the Serbo-Croatian Bosnian
community. From a traveling perspective this is also a very good draw:
I know our supporters wanted to be able to travel to see a game or two
and really now they can be sure of it rather easily as all of these
places are served by low-cost airlines, apart from possibly
Sarajevo.”


>From an on court perspective Coach Paul James added, “I’m still trying
to wake up from last season and now this? Learning we are going to be
playing a top Spanish side will be a challenge both the players and I
will absolutely relish. These are great cities and I like to think we
will really fancy our chances against some of these teams. Every week
seems to bring more excitement and good news to this basketball club;
every resident of Guildford and Surrey should be pinching themselves
right now.”


The Heat organisation now look forward to the task of speaking with
both local and national business leaders in order to secure key
sponsorship that will allow them to fly the flag for Guildford, Surrey
and Britain. “This is a very high profile competition across Europe.
Television coverage of basketball on Eurosport [the 24 hours sports
network] is watched avidly by millions, we know there are both local
and national companies that will want to benefit by being proactive in
support of their community and country. To be honest, I am sure we
will offer significant value for money compared to the sponsorship
required to fund European competition in any other sport of this
importance.”

http://www.guildfordheat.com/report-detail.asp?id=329
ULEB Cup Group Draw, Fixtures, Team Information and Competition Format

Group A
Alba Berlin
DKV Joventut
KK Bosna
Turk Telekom
Šiauliai
Guildford Heat

Fixtures
Date Opposition Venue
06/11/07 KK Bosna Away
13/11/07 DKV Joventut Home
20/11/07 Alba Berlin Away
27/11/07 Šiauliai Away
04/12/07 Turk Telekom Home
11/12/07 KK Bosna Home
18/12/07 DKV Joventut Away
08/01/08 Alba Berlin Home
15/01/08 Šiauliai Home
22/01/08 Turk Telekom Away

ULEB Cup 2007-08 Competition Format

Regular Season

The 54 teams will be divided into nine (9) groups of six (6) teams
each, by draw with certains parameters and restrictions. The Draw will
be held in Jesolo, on June 30, 2007. The proceeding for the draw will
be informed in the next few days.

Each group will play a round-robin competition (each team will play
each other both home and away).

At the end of the Regular Season, the top three (3) placed teams from
each group and the five (5) best fourth placed teams will move on the
next phase.


Elimination Rounds


In this phase two different elimination rounds will be played,
sixteenth-finals and eightfinals.

In each elimination round the teams will play both home and away, with
the overall cumulative score determinig the winner of the round. Thus
the score of a single game of an elimination round can be tied.

In each round, the teams with the higher Regular Season standing will
play the second game of each match-up at home.

More details about the elimination rounds will be provided in the next
few days.


Final Eight


The winners of the eighthfinals, will play the Final Eight in a city
to be defined.