Fifty percent of the EuroCup Final Four picture has come into focus, with Proteas EKA AEL and Dexia Mons-Hainaut scoring big road wins in Eastern Europe and knocking out Khimik and CSK-VVS Samara.

The other two spots will be decided next week when Tartu Rock host Ural Great after the former managed a 14-0 run to score a 68-61 win this week and KK Zagreb hit 11 three-pointers at over 60% for the game to knock off Barons LMT and force a deciding game three. 

General Manager Haris Papadopoulos and Proteas have done it the right way.

AEL's climb

Say hello to a new EuroCup Final Four family member. This is the first time AEL, or any team from Cyprus, has made it to the Final Four of such a prestigious competition. Three teams from Cyprus made it to the Final Four of the late FIBA-Europe Challenge Cup competitions. Guess which of them was the only club to actually win it? In 2002-2003 AEL Limassol knocked out archrivals Apollon Limassol in the semi's and beat Aleksandrovac of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the finals to bring Cyprus its first European title. Now, AEL is going for the gold again after a big 87-76 road win at Khimik. That was the fifth win in a row in the EuroCup for the Cypriot club, and with the intention of hosting the Final Four this year, they mean nothing but business. AEL showed the right way to do it, with a slow climb to the top, instead of a quick rise and then fall, a scenario European basketball veterans have witnessed too many times. Coming from a country with no basketball tradition whatsoever, they became a team that nobody can underestimate, and everybody should look at. A role model for small clubs. Now they have the Final Four stamp in their passport to back it up. Perhaps they'll have even more.

Ural Great do it from three

The only Russian survivors in the EuroCup come from Perm, where Ural Great tied their series with Tartu Rock with a 68-61 win. Ural decided the game halfway through the third quarter, just after Tartu took only their second lead of the night. Ural made a 14-0 run, with 12 of those points achieved from behind the three-point line. Actually it was with every type of three-point play the game allows including the "old fashioned" version. They connected twice behind the arc, then went to the line to hit three free throws in a row and the finale was a basket with a bonus from the line. Tartu never recovered from that, and will try to maintain a perfect home record this season to shock the Greats of Ural.

The big sub

It's not very common in football for a player to score a goal right after he enters the game, but it happens often enough. That obviously makes his coach look like a "genius"- at least until the next game! In basketball, since there are no sub limitations, people are less aware when things like that happen, so here's your chance to applaud Dexia Mons-Hainaut's head coach Chris Finch. After a big win in the first game Dexia arrived to Samara more confident, and put up a big fight for the locals. It was a close game for 40 minutes and it came down to the wire. Up by one with less than a minute to go, Dexia's Mike Lenzly tried to give his team some more space. He missed, took his own rebound, missed again, grabbed another board and missed for the third time, only to see his team-mate Benjamin Ebong copycat him before Samara grabbed the ball. With seven seconds on the clock Lenzly fouled out and saw the locals take a one point lead. Finch sent into the game the eventual hero of the night - Nate Reinking. The 34-year-old veteran guard still witnessed Samara steal the ball off the in-bound and double their lead, but just before the buzzer hit a clutch shot to stun the locals and send Dexia to the first Final Four in their history. With a season average of 48.7% from long range you can say it was a 50-50 chance to make it, but Reinking showed he's better even than that. He missed all five shots inside the arc, but with the winner he set a new individual season high of four three-pointers in a night.

AEL's run

Let's make this one quick. AEL arrived to Yuzhny with a 1-0 lead and wanted to show the locals they had no intentions to drag this one to a third game. After one quarter they already held a 31-12 lead. It was a stunning open and to show just how focused they were you should notice that AEL shot 10 out of 15 from

Filip Basljan and KK Zagreb will need to be more consistent if they hope to make the Final Four.

The Bad News

The inconsistency of Zagreb

Playing in the regular season isn't the same as playing in the play-offs. In a best-of-three series you need to show consistency or else you'll go down quickly. KK Zagreb won game two and tied the series against Barons LMT but they'll have to repeat that in the next game to make it to the Final Four and so far consistency hasn't been their strong point. In the first game Ante Tomic and the gang scored only 58 points and lost. In game two Zagreb showed what Croats were always famous for and hit 11 three-pointers at a 60% clip versus the six they made in game one to put them under 30%. 22-year-old Krunoslav Simon was on fire with five hits out of seven from long distance. This game stopped a three game streak in which Zagreb didn't score more than 63 points. Before that streak they didn't score less than 80 points six games in a row. Barons have seen both sides of Zagreb so far. Which side shows up for game three will probably decide the series.

The wrong side of team effort

AEL's great opening run in Ukraine put Khimik down by 19 after only one quarter, but with 30 minutes on the clock it's still possible to get back in the game, especially at home.  What kept Khimik from a comeback was a total of 17 turnovers, which is worse than the team's season average. Khimik made only four of them in the first quarter and that's not what allowed AEL to take off.  Still, seven out of the nine players Khimik had on the court in game two turned the ball over twice or more, which allowed their opponents too many easy baskets and made it impossible to turn the tide.