| 26.03.2009
 | 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. |
The Final Four frame is set after Wednesday's results in the EuroChallenge. Cholet Basket and BC Triumph Lyubertsy completed the list of participants in the 2009 Final Four and join the Italians Virtus BolognaFiere and Cypriot club Proteas EKA AEL. The four clubs will gather on 24-26 April to determinate who will hold the continental crown this year as  | | Artur Drozdov was good for BC Kyiv but not good enough. |
Virtus and AEL will face off in one semi-final and the last two qualifiers will face each other in the second. Cholet earned a season high scoring performance by the young prospect point guard Rodrigue Beaubois, who showed this time he can also produce the clutch plays as his team won 80-74. BC Kyiv deserve big credits for their performance this season and especially their play in the quarter-finals after the departure of so many players. Artur Drozdov carried his team for 37 minutes in one of the best individual performance of the season but didn't produce anything in the closing minutes when Cholet secured the win. This is the third time in Cholet's history the team reaches the semi-finals of a European cup after debuting in the European Cup for Men's Clubs in 1994 and reaching the semi-finals of the Korac Cup of 1998. On the other side Triumph downed Ural Great 78-63 thanks to a third quarter blitz, and earned the club's first ever Final Four ticket in their first ever participation in a FIBA Europe competition. Ural got a big night by Darius Vashington, who scored 33 points, but none in the third quarter when Triumph made their run. The Good News I Am the Team
Darius Vashington was the Louis the XIV of this week when he carried Ural Great on his back in hopes of shocking Triumph again. He scored over 50% of his team's points (33 of 63), hit individually more three-pointers than all of Triumph together (5 against 4) and was dominant for better (he led the team in steals and assists) or worse (team high of five turnovers) but what tells the story best was his second and third quarter performances. After Triumph took a double-digit lead already in the first quarter Ural Great took over the second period and deleted the difference by the break. Well, to be accurate - Vashington took over as he scored 17 points, and tied with Triumph's second quarter output. After the break it was a different story. Ural got stuck on only eight points in those ten minutes, with the US guard going blank with no points and three turnovers as Triumph climbed again to a double-digit lead. When he woke up again it was already too late. Rodrigue's Killer Instinct
Rodrigue Beaubois is on fire lately, that's a good thing but certainly not news. He has also stamped his name over some of Cholet's wins lately, but to make the difference in game three, when the whole the season was on the line is something different. On Wednesday night he showed another angle. He set his season high in scoring with 24 points, holding a 5-1 assists to turnover ratio and blocking two shots though he is only184cm tall. It was also about the killer instinct. It's not only the fact he kept his best scoring performance to the last quarter, it's how he killed Kyiv. The visitors were close behind Cholet but in two occasions managed to take the lead. That could have given them a great momentum and put the French side under big pressure, but the 21 year-old point guard didn't blink. In both cases, the first bucket of Cholet right after Kyiv took the lead was a three-pointer by Beaubois. After the second of the two efforts Kyiv never led again. The Way to the Well
With so few options on offense Kyiv relied a lot on two players in this series - Manuchar Markoishvilli and Artur Drozdov. The later presented one of the most impressive offensive performances of the season, and brought his team very close to a huge upset. After 37 minutes he had collected 26 points by making all of his five shots inside the arc, and four of five attempts behind the arc and the same ratio from the charity stripe. The last hit from the line set the score on 72-71 for Cholet with just a bit over three minutes to play. A performance like that, with the defense paying a lot of attention to you, is a great day at the office at any level, and Drozdov deserves all the credits for carrying his team all the way to that point. The Bad News The Empty Well
Sadly for Kyiv and Drozdov basketball is still a 40 minute game, and one you have to play till the last second. That wasn't the case, and this is how the Ukrainian forward becomes the first to appear on both ends of the column. After cutting the margin to the minimum Drozdov totally disappeared. He carried his team to the well, but when it was time to sip he was gone. In the closing three minutes of the series he didn't take a single shot, and his turnover with 27 seconds on the clock put the final seal on Kyiv's hopes. A Late Wake-Up Call
Ural Great entered the last 20 minutes of the series just one point behind Triumph, and it was clear that as time goes by more and more pressure will gather on the locals' shoulders. The first minutes of the second half had a lot of weight, and eventually decided the game. The club from Perm was anything but focused after the break. They scored only three points, off a single made shot, in the opening seven minutes of the half. By then Triumph already held a double-digit lead. What tells the story perfectly is the time it took Ural to take a shot inside the arc. In the first six minutes following the break the players of coach Kesar committed five turnovers and took five shots from long range. That's not the best idea on how to win a close decisive game on the road, and they paid for that. | 
