It has never been easy for Turk Telekom Ankara in the 7DAYS EuroCup, and its eighthfinal home game against Germani Brescia of Italy on Thursday was no exception.
In six seasons until this one since first playing in the EuroCup back in 2004-05, Turk Telekom had managed just two winning campaigns.
The first and best of those, a 9-1 run through the 2007-08 regular season, ended abruptly with a 26-point loss in Game 1 of the Last 32 to UNICS Kazan that Turk Telekom could not make up despite winning the next and last showdown of the series 96-93 and dropping out on aggregate score.
Three fruitless seasons over the next 12 years ended a year ago, when the team's 9-8 regular season record begat an eighthfinals berth. Again, however, Turk Telekom could go no further as it lost at Cedevita Olimpija Ljubljana 93-80.
The current season has looked different from the get-go as an early five-game winning streak led to the team rising through Group B to finish second at 13-5.
Still, new head coach Erdem Can was well award before Thursday's tipoff of Brescia's quality and the risks of the do-or-die format.
"There is no favorite for this game; it's one and done," he warned on his way into the arena. "You need to be focused from the first second to the end of the 40 minutes."
And he was right.
It wasn't until almost 30 minutes into the game, after the two teams had been through 9 ties and 18 lead changes, that a put-back by big man Tyrique Jones on the third-quarter buzzer changed the momentum for good. Turk Telekom scored the first 8 points of the final quarter, too, for a 10-0 run that finally broke Brescia's upset bid.