History will be made in French basketball on Thursday at 20:30 CET, as Sluc Nancy will make his Euroleague debut against Regal FC Barcelona, the 2003 champion. Nancy has reached the French League final in each of the last four seasons, but only managed to gain a Euroleague spot when it won the title last season. Meanwhile, FC Barcelona starts a new Euroleague season with high hopes, as even when the club won the Euroleague title in 2003, it has only returned to the Final Four once since that moment. Barcelona is deep and strong everywhere, but especially at point guard, with Jaka Lakovic, Andre Barrett and Victor Sada ready to produce. Sada is an incredible athlete with outstanding court sense, while Barrett is set to make his Euroleague debut and show his driving skills and determination. As such, Lakovic will see time at both backcourt spots this season, especially at off-guard. Nancy has been trying John Cox as point guard, since T.J. Parker is out for the season. Its only pure playmaker is Serge Tchicamboud, unexperienced at this level, but Nancy also features do-it-all, versatile swingman Ricardo Greer. He can drive any defender crazy with his ballhandling, court sense and basketball IQ, especially he plays alongside brother Jeff Greer, an outstanding slasher with a nice combination of athleticism and know-how.

Unicaja is great home team which likes to run fast breaks, shoot 3-pointers and dominate on the boards. If Le Mans will allow them to do control all this factors they will be smashed out of the court. Le Mans has some well known names like Bluthental, J.P.Batista and Spencer but they would not be playing for Le Mans if they would be top-material. All of them experience problems with their level of play and that's why Le Mans bought them this summer. Neither of them never were great defensive players and honestly speaking I was suprised with such low total in first official Le Mans games. But today they will meet much more seriuos opponent in Unicaja face.

The defending champs begin their title defense on Wednesday when CSKA Moscow hosts Armani Jeans Milano at CSKA Universal Sports Hall in the Russian capital. CSKA has a fully reloaded roster for the new season, with much of last season’s squad back and a number of new faces joining. Meanwhile Milano unveils a roster drastically different than last season’s as it aims to take a step forward to challenge for a spot in the Top 16. The teams will be a little familiar with one another after meeting in a preseason game six weeks ago.