EuroCup Champs

TigerBlog said before the NCAA basketball tournaments started that the women would outdraw the men if Caitlin Clark got to the final, and that's exactly what happened.

Oh, and it wasn't even close — the women drew four million more people than the men for the championship games.The NBA Finals and the World Series couldn't match Clark either. Again, what other athlete has ever had this kind of impact? 

There were more than 18 million who watched the women's game. You have to be either college or NFL football to exceed that number. 

There were far fewer viewers for the basketball game TigerBlog watched from start to finish yesterday. It seemed like viewership peaked around 7,000, at least according to the tracker on YouTube.

This one, though, was about as crazy as you can hope for out of a championship game. In fact, TigerBlog has never really seen anything quite like it. You could even say it was a championship game where the winner wasn't important.

The game was between the London Lions and Turkish team Besiktas, who were playing Game 2 of the EuroCup women's finals at the Copper Box Arena in London. The first game had been seven days earlier in Istanbul, where Besitkas had won 75-68.

The way the series works is that it's a two-game, home-and-home, total points situation. Because of that, Besitkas went into the game yesterday needing only to lose by fewer than seven to win the championship. 

It was a very strange way to watch a game. London led throughout, but the lead jumped above and below seven a bunch of times. It put all kinds of craziness on the proceedings — and on the play-by-play man, who kept giving the score as this particular game first and then aggregate second.

What was TigerBlog's interest? First and foremost, there was Abby Meyers, the 2022 Ivy League Player of the Year at Princeton who played in the WNBA last summer and who was in her first season with the Lions this year. 

Then there was the fact that when TB was in England this past winter, he went to write a story about Meyers and saw the Lions play twice, once in the Copper Box. It was a great experience for TB in terms of the facility and the fan base in addition to the basketball, and he has been following the team ever since.

London made its way through the EuroCup playoffs, becoming the first team from England ever to reach the final. And now all the Lions had to do was win by eight or more. 

Meyers came off the bench to hit a huge three and a layup in the first half, on a night when every single point mattered. Then, midway through the second half, she came off the bench to take two foul shots when Karlie Samuelson, who played at Stanford and for Great Britain the Olympics, was hurt while being fouled. Meyers had missed two free throws earlier in the half, but, again with the pressure of knowing every point mattered, she knocked down both.

London was in control of the game itself, and had that been all that mattered, the final few minutes would have been played much differently. Not on this night.

The fourth quarter began with London ahead 60-55, or minus-2 in the aggregate. It was 60-59 two minutes into the fourth, but the Lions scored five straight. Minus-1. 

It was 68-61 with 4:01 left. Even. It was even again at 70-63 and 73-66, the latter with under two minutes left. 

Now what? Turkey cut it to 73-68, but plus-two, with 1:35 left. A London three made it plus-one Lions with 1:16 to go. With 31 seconds left, Besitkas scored again. 76-70. London now minus-1. 

Holly Winterburn, who played at Oregon and is another great young English player at 23, drained a three-pointer with 12 seconds left. 79-70. London plus-two. That was the biggest shot of the night, one that became the game-winner when Samuelson came up with a steal and then Megan Gustafson, who held the career scoring record at Iowa before Caitlin Clark, sealed it with two foul shots. 

Final score: London 81, Besitkas 70. Lions, plus-four. 

When TigerBlog was there in December, he met a teacher named Becky Power, who had brought her daughter Elsie to that game. They were both there yesterday for the clincher.

These were the videos that Becky sent postgame last night:

 

What do you see there? You see joy. You see a huge crowd. And you see a lot of men in the audience. 

You also get to see Elsie at the very end of the second video. 

Here is what Becky said about the game: "We were there!!! It was amazing!!! I've never seen the Copper Box so packed! Elsie's been to a few sport games, including the Premier League and even a Women's World Cup game, and she said this was the best event she's been to."

This was also a very high level of basketball. It just shows you how much the women's game has grown, especially in Europe. 

Congrats to the London Lions and to Abby Meyers. And to the London fans, who were treated to something very special.

Do you think the NBA playoffs would be better if that was the format for the first round?