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.

It was a rough night from the line for Keith Langford of Virtus Bologna.

Russians avoid humiliation

One of the richest and the most ambitious clubs in the EuroChallenge is Triumph Lyubertsy from Moscow. A roster loaded with big names like Marcus Goree, Nenad Krstic, Ognjen Askrabic, Kerem Tunceri and Alan Andreson make for an impressive line-up but so far things didn't work smoothly for them. They hardly reached a home win over BC Kyiv on opening night, were shocked on the road by Skyliners last week and 32 minutes inside their home match against the Estonian club BC Kavel Cramo they were down 56-53. Players who make in a year what some of Triumph players make in a month were standing on the edge of a dream. Then, right before it was too late, Triumph went on a 16-0 run to finish the game with a 16 point win. The Russians missed only two shots in that run, while the visitors missed all their nine shots that made the whole difference. Until the buzzer all that Kalev scored were three more points, all from the line, while Triumph kept their momentum up. The same story happened to Lokomotiv Rostov, who came close to loss to Swiss side Benetton Olympic Fribourg. With less than five minutes on the clock the hosts held a one point lead, 56-55, but then came a 9-2 run that saved Rostov from an unpleasant episode.

Even Janisen

Latvian side, Ventspils, suffered two big defeats coming into this week's tough home game against Cajasol from Spain. Nevertheless they found the way to win 78-70 and set a new season high in points for the club. Each of the teams excelled with an impressive 18 baskets out of 20 free throw attempts, so the difference was made in other spots on court. Ventspils wrote one unique number, when they attempted and scored the same number of shots from close and far range - 12 out of 29 - not an every day occurrence in the courts that probably awarded them with the Latvian nickname of Even Steven. Cajasol tried to copycat by hitting 11 times inside the arc and one less outside, but the spread, and obviously percentages, were different.

Kadziulis' answer

Last week Liege's Chris Hill missed all his four shots from close range but hit seven out of ten attempts from long range. This week one of the best shooters in the competition, Lithuanian guard Gintaras Kadziulis of Siauliai replied, although it didn't save his team from a 96-82 loss to Den Bosch. Last week Kadziulis was six out of eight from long distance, but Hill's performance kept him in the shadows. This week he left no room for questions, when he matched his opponent with the same seven out of ten from three-point land. The Lithuanian shooter missed his two attempts in the first quarter, and hit his first attempt around two minutes inside the second quarter. That means he actually went seven out of eight in a span of 24 minutes. Now it's Hill turn to respond.

Crunch time Grier

Cholet owes their perfect record to the huge fourth quarter performance of their US forward Vincent Grier. On a very tough road game at Sumy, against the local BC Sumykhimprom, Cholet entered the last quarter down by 65-58. They started with a 12-2 run to take the lead, and maintained a small lead until the buzzer, when they won 82-81. Grier scored 10 points out of his 20 in the last quarter in addition to a single assist. He scored all of his four attempts from the field in that period and added two more from the line in the closing 15 seconds that helped lock the W even on a rare slow night by the sensational Nando De Colo. 

The Bad News

Langford's jinx

Shooters tend to have cold days from time to time. The rims they know so well seem smaller than normal. Those are the days you see them finishing with six missed shots from long range or something similar. For a player who scored 15 points per game three years in a row in a big school as the University of Kansas and two seasons ago reached almost 20 points per game in the strong Italian second division, as Virtus Bologna's Keith Langford, it's unusual to finish games after missing all five attempts from the free-throw line. Langford was never a great free-throw shooter, but coming into the game stood on perfect four hits from the line. What made it even more peculiar was the fact Langford was in a great shooting night from the field, where he connected on 66% of his shots on nine attempts.

Hapoel went cold

So Langford went cold from the line, but Hapoel saw the usual type of going cold. Actually they froze from the arc. Combo guard Timmy Bowers and combo-forward Omar Sneed each were zero of out six from long range as Hapoel combined for three out of 19 in the 88-81 home loss to EWE Baskets. Je'kel Foster of the German side showed how to get it done when he scored six times from distance, only one less than the season high in the competition.

Breaking the rim

SAOS Hyeres Toulon felt like it was going their way. A 12-3 run late in the third brought them back in the game at Bonn against the local Telekom Baskets who held a double-digit lead early in the second half. Three minutes inside the fourth SAOS' Auston Nicholas, one of the best shooters in the competition, drilled from long range to make it 61-59 in favor of the hosts, but from that point on his team went stone cold. In the closing seven minutes of the game the French scored only two points, against ten on of the other side. In that period SAOS made two turnovers and missed eight shots, but that wasn't the reason for the loss as the team from Bonn wrote the exact same numbers in those categories in that stretch - eight missed shot and a pair of rebounds. What made the difference were actually three offensive rebounds by the locals which they converted into points.