MIES (Switzerland) - After a hard-fought win over Igokea m:tel on Gameday 1 of the Basketball Champions League Season X, powered by Ameresco SUNEL, Galatasaray MCT Technic traveled to Italy for a showcase match-up against newcomers Pallacanestro Trieste.
Trieste had opened their BCL account with a road loss at Wurzburg, and last year's finalists could have been forgiven for expecting to find Israel Gonzalez Trieste team struggling for rhythm in a new competition.
Instead, what they found was one of the loudest home crowds in the BCL so far this season, and a Trieste team playing with fluency and determination.
Eventually, Gala won the game 91-90 at the death, thanks to a Freddie Gillespie tip-in with just seconds on the clock.
It took every last drop of championship potential that this Gala squad has to get over the line. Let's dive in and look at the key takeaways from the game.
GALA MADE THEIR SIZE COUNT
After reaching the Final last season in Athens, Gala have re-tooled and built an even deeper squad.
Incoming players Errick McCollum, John Meeks, and Christian Bishop were all on the scoreline in the game, with 'signing of the season' candidate Fabian White Jr dropping another impressive stat-line, with 19 points, 9 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.
But it was another new arrival, Muhsin Yasar from Karsiyaka, that had the most underrated and possibly also the most telling contribution of the game.
The 2.08m big man had 10 points on 80 percent shooting and has given Gala's front line the muscle to dominate with every lineup.
In that video above, we see Gala rinse the exact same set on three consecutive possessions to start the second quarter.
On each occasion, the play starts with Yasar setting an early offense ball screen, and instead of rolling to the rim, he sets a down screen to get James Palmer Jr open at the top of the key.
From there, Palmer had the height and length advantage to make an easy high-low pass to Yasar with an isolated 1v1, deep in the paint.
The play design is simple but ruthlessly effective. Gala won the paint battle 48-34, on the road, in a hostile atmosphere. That's championship team behavior right there.
TRIESTE ARE NOT AN 0-2 TEAM
Ok, so yes, Trieste are in fact sitting at 0-2 at the bottom of Group E, but if they play like this every week, they won't stay there.
They put together spurts in the game when they were clearly the better team. 2020 NBA Draft pick for the Sacramento Kings, Jahmi'us Ramsey had a shot to win the game that just wouldn't drop, and you could be forgiven for wondering if a pull-up three-ball was the right selection on a night when he was 1-of-5 from deep.
Congratulations to Galatasaray. Today we flipped the coin and it wasn't for us.
But Ramsey was a 43 percent shooter with Texas Tech in college and shot 34 percent in the NBA G League.
This is Ramsey's first year overseas, and you can already see from the eye test that he's going to be a top player on this continent.
Another rookie on this team is Mady Sissoko, and both players put up performances that made this particular BCL columnist feel a tinge of regret for neglecting to include them in our pre-season look at the New Kids on the BCL Block.
As impressive as Ramsey and Sissoko were as rookies alongside strong veteran performances from Juan Toscano-Anderson, Colbey Ross, and Jarrod Uthoff, the most encouraging thing for Trieste is the offensive flow that head coach Israel Gonzalez is implementing.
They push the pace from every rebound and execute actions off the ball as well as any team we have seen so far in the BCL this season.
The "Shuffle" offense action that you see in the two clips below is a great example of the type of execution you can look out for when you watch Trieste.
In the first clip #22, Markel Brown gave the ball up to make a shallow cut and got it back on the ball reversal to the wing.
As he gets the ball back, #25 Davide Moretti sets the back screen for #23 Jeff Brooks, who rejected the action to sprint towards the ball.
This triggered #13, Francesco Candussi, to slip to the basket for the easy layup under the rim.
In the second clip, they reversed the action to the other side of the floor, and this time used the back screen to get a post up.
Trieste executed multiple options of different offensive sets like this all night. It made them unpredictable and very tough to stop.
GALA LOOK LIKE A CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENDER
Championship contenders find ways to win in difficult situations, and that is exactly what Gala and Freddie Gillespie did in this game.
It's not always a perfectly designed play on offense or a showstopping block at the rim on defense. Sometimes it's just sheer force of will and hustle.
And that force of will was present the entire game for Yakup Sekizkok's team.
Every time Trieste made a run, Gala had the answer. Often it was a steal or deflection on the defensive end that led to a run-out fastbreak, but other times it was the likes of Fabian White Jr and Will Cummings just doing what they do best and making shots.
The play above is after a timeout, late in the third quarter.
Trieste had just reeled off a run of 4-0 run to cut the lead to just three points and forced Sekizkok to call a timeout.
Coming out of the timeout, Trieste destroyed the play by denying Gala's #3 Errick McCollum the catch on the wing.
Cummings didn't flinch. Watch how he waved McCollum through, just ran the play for himself instead, then forced his way to the rim for the and-1.
This is the mentality of this Gala team on full display, and they are going to take some stopping.