By Johannes Baier

One thing was obvious in Barcelona at the joint draw of FIBA Europe and Euroleague this Thursday: The EuroChallenge is indeed appealing for those playing in it.

Mediapro, right next to the impressive Torre Agba in Barcelona, was buzzing as the representatives of 54 clubs waited for their fate in the next edition of the EuroChallenge.

Eight of them will leave the competition and will not look back as they go on to fight for glory in the Eurocup.

The Eurocup Qualifying Round features prominent names such as Benetton Treviso and German ex-Champions and this year's runners-up Deutsche Bank Skyliners.

Then there are the only ten teams who can sort of start making plans, even if they hardly know any of their opponents.

One of them is long time participants Tartu Rock from Estonia.

Playing in Eurocup last season after going all the way to the final game in the 2008 edition of EuroChallenge their general manager Meelis Pastak is more than happy to make his return to EuroChallenge.

"All games are pretty good in EuroChallenge and we will have a great season" he answered when asked for an outlook on the upcoming group phase.

"I have no preferences on who we will finally meet in our group, since all teams are on a very similar level

"My favorites for the competition, although this is hard to predict, are KK Zagreb and KRKA Novo Mesto from Slovenia."

Another team that know they will play in the Regular Season but not exactly with whom are Belgium outfit BC Telenet Oostende.

The 12 time Belgian Champions are waiting for their opponents to be decided and in the meantime already set some milestones for 2010/11 according to Media & Marketing Director Dirk Goethals:

"We already resigned 70% of last year's Roster.

"Our main focus is now signing one more American player."

The club was able to extend the contracts of last year's top performers Caleb Green and Matt Lojeski and it will be seen if they can go for glory domestically and in the EuroChallenge.

For others, planning for the Regular Season would be premature since the high number of clubs registering caused a 28 team Qualifying Round out of which only 14 will make it to the Regular Season.

"We hope to go through the Qualification." Said BC Minsk 2006 President Kanstantin Sherava, who is one of the very few club presidents in Europe to send a team to a men's (EuroChallenge) and a women's (EuroCup Women) competition this season.

"We know that the Antwerp Giants are a good team and we really hope we can upset them.

"We would be playing in an interesting group (possibly Cedevity Zagreb, Lokomotiv Kuban & BC Kyiv).

"We have a very young team and our goal is to win the EuroChallenge one day in the future."

Despite the uncertainties that many clubs and their fans are facing one thing is for certain: the EuroChallenge title is the aim and 32 teams will fight for this one goal once the Regular Season kicks off on November 16.