Saras Jasikevicius will now look to end the Turkish side's five-year absence from the Final Four
Fenerbahce makes the playoffs for the 10th time!
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Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul is the latest team to punch its ticket for the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs, which is the 10th time in club history that it has reached the postseason.
Despite not playing on Thursday night, Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv's loss at FC Barcelona guaranteed Fenerbahce's place in the playoffs.
Having started the season with Dimitris Itoudis as head coach, Fenerbahce went 6-7 under the Greek tactician’s orders, although that did include a dismal 1-7 mark on its travels. The decision to dismiss Itoudis came as a surprise, yet Fenerbahce has gone to another level since the arrival of Saras Jasikevicius, who has overseen a 14-5 record and solidified the team’s spot in the playoff places.
Fenerbahce’s home dominance key
A 15-1 home record is the best in the entire EuroLeague and it is also the basis upon which the Turkish side has made its playoff push. The top nine, excluding Fenerbahce for obvious reasons, have all visited Ulker Sports and Events Hall and come away with a defeat. Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens and Olympiacos Piraeus were the first two playoff teams to fall at Fenerbahce’s home, before the previously unbeaten Real Madrid fell on its sword in Istanbul. However, disappointing defeats on the road continued to hold Fenerbahce back, hence the dismissal of Itoudis.
In some ways, Jasikevicius picked up where Itoudis left off – at least in terms of home dominance – by beating AS Monaco and Zalgiris Kaunas in Istanbul in successive weeks. Impressively, though, games three and four of the Jasikevicius era included back-to-back road wins, first at ALBA Berlin and then at cross-city rival Anadolu Efes Istanbul. In the space of a week, the Lithuanian coach had doubled what Itoudis’s Fenerbahce achieved, going 2-0 away from Ulker Sports and Events Hall compared to 1-7 under the Greek tactician.
There was a surprise defeat at home to Crvena Zvezda Meridianbet Belgrade – Fenerbahce’s only loss at home this season – but Jasikevicius’s charges quickly reeled off three straight wins, all at home, against Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv, Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade and FC Bayern Munich. There was a sticky patch between Rounds 22 and 26, with Fenerbahce going 2-3, which included back-to-back losses at Monaco and Panathinaikos, but a high-scoring triumph over Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz in Round 27 got things back on track.
Fenerbahce did what only one team had done beforehand by going to WiZink Center and beating Real, thus doing the double over the EuroLeague leader and reigning champion, before home wins over Valencia Basket and FC Barcelona. There was a narrow loss on the road at EA7 Emporio Armani Milan, but Fenerbahce’s latest win against ALBA Berlin, which featured a 50-point night from Nigel Hayes-Davis has proved to be enough for the team to rubber stamp its spot in the playoffs.
A team made for the Final Four
Jasikevicius took his former team, Barcelona, to the Final Four in three consecutive years between 2021 and 2023, while he also guided Zalgiris to European basketball’s showpiece event in 2018. Will he be able to bring Fenerbahce to the Final Four after a five-year absence?
He certainly has a squad that is capable of doing so. Nick Calathes, Sertac Sanli and Melih Mahmutoglu – the remaining survivor from the Fenerbahce team that won the 2016-17 title – may be the only players on the roster with a EuroLeague championship to their names, but the squad has plenty of playoff experience. Sanli is looking to reach a fourth straight Final Four, like Jasikevicius, having gone all the way with Efes in 2020-21 before back-to-back trips alongside the Lithuanian coach at Barca.
There are 11 players on this year’s roster who appeared in Fenerbahce’s five-game playoff series against Olympiacos last year. Of those players, Marko Guduric and Tarik Biberovic reached the Final Four with Fenerbahce in the past, with the former doing so in 2017-18 before they both did so in 2018-19. Tyler Dorsey (Olympiacos, 2021-22) and Nigel Hayes-Davis (Barcelona, 2021-22) have previously made it to the Final Four, too. This will be the first time that Amine Noua and Nate Sestina have featured in the EuroLeague Playoffs.