To say Yarone Arbel likes basketball would be an understatement of epic proportions.  He eats, sleeps and breathes it and gives his EuroChallenge impressions every week in Good News, Bad News.

This week also showed that the top teams of last year's Final Four are still alive and kicking, even against teams considered to be much stronger. Dexia Mons-Hainut smashed Galatasaray 91-65 while Tartu Rock hosted Virtus Bologna, who's point guard Earl Boykins makes more than the entire budget of Tartu, but lost only with the buzzer in overtime.

The Good News

Farewell run

On Tuesday Base Oostende had their farewell EuroChallenge game from Sharon Drucker. The Israeli coach had an offer to join the staff of Maccabi Tel Aviv and chose to take the big opportunity in two hands. The club accepted his request, but asked him to stay for two more games until they will find a new coach. Both sides knew it's the last game he will lead the club in the EuroChallenge and his players granted him a great goodbye present with a 98-75 win over the strong visiting team of CSK-VVA Samara. It all came down to the forth quarter. Drucker entered the last ten minutes with a three point lead, but in the next six minutes saw his team make a 21-2 run. Great pressure on defense forced Samara to turn the ball over no less than seven times in only seven minutes. Not an ordinary sight. Oostende missed just a single field goal shot in that time span and sent Drucker back home to Israel with a big smile on his face.

Moran Roth helped lead Hapoel Jerusalem to a big road victory in Greece.

Staying in Belgium we see one of the hottest teams in the competition. Belgacom Liege reached the regular season after two qualifying rounds and in total they stand so far on a perfect 6-0, while four of those wins were collected on the road, half of them in close games. The last one was also the most impressive. A shocking 79-78 road win over Spanish side Cajasol Sevilla, a club with a much bigger budget and bigger names on the roster like Andrea Pecile, Tyrone Ellis, Tyus Edney and Mile Ilic. Liege didn't score a single point in the last 3:25 minutes of the game, and saw Cajasol cut a 79-74 gap to just a single point with 1:41 to play. The Spanish side had three possessions to win the game, but blew each and every one of them. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that Pedro Rivero Del Caz, a back up point guard who's not known especially for his scoring and reached only four points that night, was the one to take the last two shots of the game.

Big in Greece

Week two of the EuroChallenge regular season saw 12 teams win at home while only three won on the road. Among those, three were won by a single basket, including a buzzer-beater overtime win, which leaves Hapoel Migdal Jerusalem with the most impressive road win this week, 54-71 in Greece over Olympia Athienitis. Only Telekom Baskets Bonn scored as few points as Olympia, but they played at Perm against Ural Great, far away from their home rims. Hapoel played a great team game with six players in double-digits, but more importantly they limited their opponents to only seven made shots inside the arc, and a poor 54 point in front of their home fans.

The Bad News

Last quarter drought

The stage was set for Keravnos of Cyprus to collect their first win in the regular season. Guard Jarrett Hart scored a lay up to set the difference on 81-69 with 7:39 to go to cap an 18-4 run. The problem was that this would be the second to last field goal for Kervanos in the game. The Cypriot club scored only two points in the last 5:40, which allowed Toulon to reply with a similar 19-4 run and win a close game. Winning Coach Alain Weisz used, for a change, a wide rotation of seven players and once again saw a great contribution from his foreigners as Dontaye Draper and Austin Nicholas combined for 49 points with eight hits from downtown and ten rebounds.

A second grade question

When your team goes on the road and finishes the game with no less than 15 three-pointers on a terrific 51.7% it usually means you will travel back with a smile on your face. Just to emphasis how rare it is to sink 15 three-pointers in a game, here's a short history lesson. In each of the 2006 and 2007 EuroCup editions only four teams reached that number. This past season only two teams managed it, and none went beyond that number. Nevertheless Khimik carried on their back a 10 point loss on the trip back to Ukraine. It happened because of soft defense, which allowed KK Zagreb to score 29 two-point baskets at an impressive 67.4% clip. Since Zagreb scored almost twice as many two point shots as Khimik managed from long range, any, or at least most, second grade students will tell you two times two is more than three.

Road bitter road

Lots of money and talent were brought this summer to Galatasaray, but once the team leaves Istanbul something dreadful is happening. It started in the EuroCup qualifying round when they finished a game against Siauliai with a tie, but at home won by 31. In the second round they beat KK Buducnost at home by two, but lost by 31 on the road! In the EuroChallenge regualr season they beat KK Zagreb by 15 in Istanbul, but this week suffered a terrible 91-65 defeat to Dexia Mons-Hainaut. With a huge list of stars such as Dejan Milojevic, Milan Gurovic, Andrija Zizic, Huseyin Besok and Antonio Graves - coach Murat Ozyer saw only back up forward Erdem Turetken score in double digits. Turetken scored 14 to almost double his total from the first five games of the season (16).