Fener, Efes out for Euroleague revenge

With the Turkish Airlines Euroleague's regular season entering its final stretch and the playoff races heating up, Fenerbahçe, a hot team in the competition, faces city rival Darüşşafaka Doğuş tomorrow, where the Yellow Canaries will look to avenge a Round 13 loss at home against the same challengers.

Darüşşafaka, however, have slumped to a 3-5 record since the win in December, while Fenerbahçe have picked up four wins in four games to improve their records to an impressive 6-2.

Elsewhere, two teams that look like they might be catching some momentum, face each other in Istanbul's Abdi İpekçi Arena, as Anadolu Efes welcomes EA7 Emporio Armani Milan.

The visitors come into the clash having won three of their last four and a win like the one they picked up last week, a 25-point second-half comeback against Darüşşafaka, could change any team's season.

Milan are just the team that need that type of season-changing event, as it has ground to make up due to its current 7-14 record, and in that sense, a win against Efes would be a must in an attempt to keep any realistic playoff hopes alive.

However, Efes are coming into the match with a huge win of its own, a road triumph in Belgrade that could be a game changer for Efes' season.

Coach Velimir Perasovic's team have been positioned in the middle of the table for the majority of this campaign, and adding few more victories to its current records could catapult Efes in the standings.

Meanwhile, a few other sides have already heat up the competition and none more so than Real Madrid. With a competition-best 16-5 record, and winning last seven of its games, Madrid will visit Unics Kazan in hope of extending the streak and edging closer to securing one of the top four places that bring home court advantage in the playoffs.

Two other in-form teams on winning runs will go against one another when Olympiacos Piraeus hosts Zalgiris Kaunas.

Olympiacos has a 10-2 record in its last 12 matches, while Zalgiris arrives at Piraeus on a three-game winning streak.

Even though Olympiacos had won in the first meeting by 13 points, when they faced off in Kaunas earlier in the season, it was a very tight game through the first three quarters, featuring 23 lead changes and 10 ties.

Zalgiris have won only once against Olympiacos at the Peace and Friendship Stadium, when it beat the then-defending-champions Reds 61-79 in October of 2012.

Paulius Jankunas is the only remaining Zalgiris player from that roster, while Georgios Printezis, Vassilis Spanoulis, Kostas Papanikolaou and Vangelis Mantzaris had all played for Olympiacos back in 2012.

The battle between Panathinaikos Superfoods Athens and Brose Bamberg will feature two players who have scored the most three-point shots so far this season, Bamberg's Darius Miller and K.C. Rivers of Panathinaikos. Miller has drained 47 triples this season and Rivers is just one behind with 46. However, they are only two of nine players this Euroleague season who have already hit at least 40 threes and they are just two of 11 players who average at least two three-point shots made through 21 rounds.

With more than two thirds of the regular season in the books, the sample size is large enough to see a significant increase in the number of shots made from downtown. In each of the past two seasons, seven qualified players finished the Euroleague making at least two triples per game, and it has never been more than that ever since the three-point line was moved from 6.25 meters to 6.75. In the first such season, six years ago, there were only two players who made at least two threes per contest.Interestingly, those 11 players making at least two triples per game this season come from 11 different teams, and there are six different teams that are making at least nine triples per game. That is tied for the most ever in a single season, too.

In the previous 16 seasons combined, a total of only 24 teams finished the season making nine or more three-point shots per game.