Time dragged by this past week for the Bayern Basketball team as they are not used to waiting so long between games. "The whole season we had at least two or three games a week, now we've trained more, that's an unusual rhythm," said co-captain Vladimir Lucic at midweek when his team was looking forward to the second play-off quarter-finals with the Lions. But from now on, the German champion will have a real play-off feeling, the defending champion will meet the team from Saxony twice within 48 hours: On Friday evening for game two in Braunschweig and then on Sunday at 18:00 in the Audi Dome for the second home game of the Best-of-five series. Bayern is up 1-0 in the series after a 70-59 victory last week.
The game starts on Friday at 20:30, MagentaSport and FC Bayern TV will go live as usual a quarter of an hour before tip-off.
"Will appear completely differently
Braunschweig is also looking forward to their first play-off home game since 2012. The reduced hall capacity this season was quickly expanded again for the duel with the champions and Braunschweig is expecting significantly more than 5,000 spectators (average so far: 3,400). Bayern coach Dejan Radonjic already knows about the home strength of the host, who lost only four of 17 games at home in the regular season. "We will have a different game than in Munich. They have already won the last two home games clearly and have already had great victories at home, with victories over Berlin and Bamberg. So they have shown that they can stand up to any team."
However, the Bavarians still have plenty of room to improve compared to the first game, when the aggressive defense of the opponent sometimes affected the rhythm of the defending champs and forced 16 turnovers. "We have to make better use of our fastbreak situations again", the coach said, "we have to get to being more constistant again", playmaker Maodo Lo added: "If we don't play our best it's going to be hard".
Lucic said: "At the beginning of the playoffs it's normal to be a little nervous. But we won and we controlled the game."
Cup round of sixteen against Telekom Baskets Bonn
In the draw for the cup round of sixteen, the Bavarians have lucked into a home game in the first round: on the last weekend of September (28./29.9.) they will face Telekom Bonn, it will be their first compulsory game of the new season. The other pairings: Berlin - Würzburg, Weißenfels - Bayreuth, Ulm - Vechta, Frankfurt - Göttingen, Crailsheim - Oldenburg, Ludwigsburg - Braunschweig, Gießen - Bamberg.