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

The Final Four picture is now complete after Barons LMT Riga and Tartu Rock - two representatives from the Baltic region, completed a big season with home wins in game three.

Once again no team managed to come back from 1-0, and BC Kyiv remains the only club in the EuroCup history that was successful in turning the tide. Both Barons and Tartu will celebrate their first ever semi-finals appearance in a European competition.

The Good News

George Tsintsadze put in another MVP performance for Tartu.

King George still shines

One very strong contender for the MVP title of the season is the Georgian point guard of Tartu Rock - George Tsintsadze. It's not the first time George has found the spotlight in Good News Bad News, and in the better part of it, and every time he gives another good reason to do it. In game three he was the top scorer of his team with a season high 25 points, he also added four rebounds, three assists and buried all of his 10 shots from the free throw line. Tartu were behind since the early minutes of the second quarter, and entered what could have been the last quarter of their season down by six, but then it was Tsintsadze's time. He re-entered the game right after the third quarter break and instantly dominated the court. 15 of his points came in the last quarter when Tartu took over the game and won that period 31-13. Yes, the Georgian prince outscored the entire team of Ural Great in the deciding quarter of the season. How else would you spell MVP?

Barons' seeds gave fruit

One of the most interesting things to check in a team's season is their record in close games, and since day one of the competition, the very early days of the preliminary rounds, Barons LMT showed one consistent thing - they love to play it close. Out of 10 games Barons played up until game three, seven were decided by six points or less. Their total record wasn't even a good one, three wins against four losses, but the experience they got turned out to be fruitful. In game three they had a close race with KK Zagreb right from the tip off. Barons led perhaps 80% or more of the game, but the biggest lead was by eight points, and back in the first quarter. With a minute to go the Croats made it just a two point game, and being the home team, you would expect Barons to be under pressure, but then experience kicked in. Throughout the season there were several different scenarios in which Barons performed in the last seconds of close games. This time it was a steal by US forward Demetrius Alexander with nine seconds on the clock, and up by three, he was followed by Dainius Adomaitis who buried two from the line to secure the Final Four ticket.

Tartu's free throws march

Usually it takes years of experience and failures to get your skin thick enough to have your club function in the big minutes of the big games. In any level of the game clubs spend years attempting to gain confidence and learn the know-how of those situations - when the entire season is on the line, and the pressure is at its peak. It goes beyond whose the coach and how experienced the players are - these things sometimes are decided in the club's level. Tartu, in their first ever big game in a European competition, with all the pressure on their shoulders, showed just how big they are. With two minutes on the clock Ural Great were still only six points behind, but kept sending the locals to the line. Tartu answered with 10 made shots out of 12 attempts in the most crucial time of the season. Those two missed shots were back-to-back from the hands of Gert Kullamae, Tartu's best shooter and most veteran and experienced player. All in all Tartu entered the last quarter with a 16 out of 22 record from the line, and in the most important ten minutes of the season converted 13 out of 15. If that's not a step up, what is?

Real time high execution

Barons and KK Zagreb have never played in a Final Four of a European competition, and coming to game three you might expect both sides to be a little bit nervous. It's not very often we get to see teams that don't perform at their best those win-or-die games. The pressure is high, the thrill makes your hands sweaty, the atmosphere gets into your head and so on and so on. You'd expect at least one of the teams, if not both, not to reach their season averages. In game three of Barons and Zagreb we saw nothing of that. Already after one quarter the score was 30-27, and by half time the scoreboard read 56-55. Both teams showed a very high level of execution almost from every spot on the floor. They scored on 60% of their two-point attempts, Barons hit on 47.6% from long range, while the visiting side had a reasonable 37% from the same distance, and they covered for that with 20 out of 25 from the free throw line. The total number of turnovers in the game was 16 and the assists rose to 35. Rarely do we see such great execution in such a crucial game.

The Bad News

The lost touch

For three quarter Ural Great had it all sorted out. They used a big second quarter, in which they scored 32 points, to take the lead and seemed on their way to "setting things straight". A team with a legacy like Ural Great has in this decade can't afford to lose to a club from Estonia, who have never done anything outside of their home country, right? Well, then came the last quarter, and everything went wrong. Ural entered the last quarter after making 17 out of 24 shots from two-point range, but went two out of seven in the last quarter. Add to that missing all four attempts from long range, and you get only two field goals made in the fourth quarter of game three. That earned them a trip back to Perm without a Final Four ticket.

It came down to two...

KK Zagreb came close, but finished this EuroCup campaign in the quarter-finals. In game three they relied mainly on two players - Ante Tomic and Jakov Vladovic -and that might have been too much for them to handle. See just how dominating that duo was. They scored 40 out of the team's 91 points, and took 27 field goal attempts out of 61 for the entire team, They shot 12 out of 25 free throws, grabbed 12 out of 36 rebounds, dished 10 out of 19 assists and turned over eight out of the team's total of 10. Six categories in which they contributed at least 33% of the entire team. In five of those categories the percentage went up to 44%.