Dusko Savanovic, Unics Kazan
 After not playing first-division pro basketball until he was almost 22, Unics Kazan forward Dusko Savanovic is quickly making up for lost time. Still just 24, Savanovic has more ULEB Cup games in him than all but 40 players in the competition's six-season history, and if he has his way, will pass a few more while trying to help Unics reach the Final Eight. Savanovic did his part in the Last 32, averaging 15 points and 3.5 assists against Turk Telekom to upend the seeding logic. Now, he wants to avoid underestimating Last 16 opponent Artland and keep his Unics going further than anyone expected after its 1-3 start to the regular season. ""Only three or four of us are still here from last year, and in this new situation we see opportunity, because no one is counting on us. People think we're not the Unics of last year. Since we seem to have problems - we haven't won road games, we changed players, changed the coach - maybe the respect for us is down. We'll try to use that in our favor to surprise people." 
"This season, as everyone knows, we had a lot of changes. We changed players, changed the coach. We started slowly, pretty bad in fact, but the last three months we've been winning a lot. I think we only have two ULEB Cup losses in that time. Comparing this season with last season, though, is tough. Last season, I think we needed just 10 more minutes in our series against Madrid and for sure we would have been champions of the ULEB Cup. I think we had the best team in the ULEB Cup last year and one of the best in Europe, as good as half the Euroleague teams. What we didn't have was luck, or brains, I don't know which. This year we don't have so many stars, but maybe that can be good, because everyone wants to work and prove themselves. We've got to see where it takes us."
"I have to be honest and say I never heard of artland. I don't want to say that disrespectfully. Jus tthat I didn't know about them, and it can be tough playing against a team that like that. It happened to Triumph Lyubertsy, who got beat by Artland. You can't underestimate them, or that will be the biggest problem. It's a team with no tradition and nothing to lose, but they want to prove themselves against big teams like Unics. And because of that, they are highly motivated."
"I know only about one of their players, Leon Rodgers, because I remember him playing last season for EiffelTowers and when we did scouting on them, we spent almost 40 minutes talking about him, because he was their most important guy. So it says something that he has more players around him on Artland. We have to stop the whole team, but stopping him will help. If we can win by just a point in Germany, I am sure we can win by more at home. But we have to start playing strong on the road. We won only one road game in the ULEB Cup this year and lost all the others. Changing that will be important if we want to go far this season." |
Leon Rodgers, Artland Dragons
 Leon Rodgers of Artland Dragons has taken a circuitious route to the Last 16. After a three-game debut in 2004-05 with one Dutch team, he returned two seasons later with another, EiffelTowers Den Bosch, and exploded as the 2006-07 regular season's second-rated player. An all-around threat who can shoot, drive, pass and rebound, Rodgers got the call from Artland in the middle of the current season and answered by giving the team its second-most points and rebounds during its Last 32 victory over Triumph Lyubertsy. Having sprung perhaps the biggest upset of the elimination rounds so far, Rodgers and Artland will try the same against Unics. "It means a great deal to me to have reached this stage of the ULEB Cup. Every year I feel like I've gotten a little bit better. So coming here, I was very hungry as far as getting into the Last 32 teams and to be in the Last 16. Now, I'm hungry to get to the Final Eight. I think that we have a very good chance of winning. We're a team that is kind of the underdog, which is good because you come in playing more relaxed."  "This is the first time in my career that I joined a team midway through the season. When you do that and you’re expected to come in and be one of the leaders and one of the scorers, it’s kind of difficult, because you have to play well enough for the players to like you and well enough for the coaches to like you and at the same time blend in well enough to be accepted. It was a difficult transition, but I think that now I am starting to play the way I am capable of playing and the results are starting to show that."
"I think I have the most ULEB up experience on our team. We just have to go ahead and hold nothing back and not look at the names on their shirts and just play basketball. I’ve met a few of the guys on Kazan and I know Tariq Kirksay. A bunch of the players from Kazan are the same from last year and last year I had some success against them, so I know them just from playing against them. I think that I have to be confident going into a game like this because I think if you come in not mentally ready you could get run over. So I think we have to be real confident about what we can do, belive in what we can do and then just do it."
"I think one of the keys to the series is being the most physical team. Kazan is known for being a physical team and also for being able to shoot the ball. The key for us is also getting rebounds. I think we’re a pretty good offensive team. We have to rebound well and to be physical with them to let them know, ‘Hey, you got a tough game here.’ I think you have to approach the games one at a time. The Triumph game, the first one at home, we approached it as, ‘Let’s just win the game.’ We didn’t worry about the points system or anything like that. And that’s the same way we want to approach Kazan. We want to win at home and then to go on the road and get that one too. I think Unics Kazan has a tougher arena to play in than Triumph, but I think that we can get it done." |