What's up everyone? This is Saul Blanco of Unicaja, once again, making my second blog entry. The first time I wrote to you, we were about to play against Panathinaikos in Athens. You already know that things did not go as planned for us in Athens. Playing at OAKA against a great team like Panathinaikos is always difficult. We lost by 26, but still managed to recover, win the following week and retain some chances to make it to the Playoffs. It was difficult to find something positive after such a big loss to Panathinaikos, but we learned that if we want to win, we have to dominate the boards and not allow easy baskets. These were the reasons that Panathinaikos was able to break open the game really early against us. We are now hoping that the game against Panathinaikos will be remembered as our low point this season and that everything works better from that moment. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Spanish King's Cup this week, so we will be practicing hard for a week without any games. That will allow coach Chus Mateo to get to know us a bit better and improve everything he wants us to do on court.

I guess you know what happened against Lietuvos Rytas, too. We won at the end in a high-scoring game after Nedzad Sinanovic came in and played incredibly well for us! We had trouble on the defensive boards, but Nedzad showed up late in the game and changed it completely. Did you see his stats?!? He almost played the perfect game! No missed shots, 15 points, 8 rebounds, 4 fouls drawn and a 27 index rating in 13 minutes! At the very end of the game, he picked up one foul and it was his only negative stat. Unbelievable! He helped us a lot at both ends, especially on defense, rebounding and intimidating. We had... more

Hello, Euroleague fans! My name is Saul Blanco, I play for Unicaja and this is my first blog entry on Euroleague.net! Most people outside Spain probably don't know me much, so I had better introduce myself. This is my second season in Unicaja and before that I played for two other Spanish teams, Fuenlabrada and Gijon, since I turned pro. Of course, I have been playing basketball since I was a small kid. Before that, I played for Siglo XXI, a special program for promising players here in Spain, and it was quite an experience for me. It was a high-performance center where there were 20 or 21 kids. We had a cadet and a junior team and the main purpose was to raise basketball talents. We went to school in the morning and practiced in the afternoon, in the same building where we slept. We had a gym, a medical center and a basketball court, of course! I played two years with Txemi Urtasun - now a Eurocup blogger! - but also his twin brother Alex, Fran Vazquez, Sergio Rodriguez and Jon Kortaberria.

We've had a good Euroleague season so far, I think. We managed to make it to the Top 16 for the sixth consecutive season, which not many teams can say in Europe. We had two very good home wins against Real Madrid and Olympiacos which allowed us to finish third overall in our regular season group, right behind those two teams. We started the Top 16 with a home loss against Caja Laboral. Our new coach Chus Mateo had just arrived to the team and things went fairly well, but Laboral is a very tough opponent. We stayed in the game but lost by a small difference that I hope we can overcome in the second-leg game in Vitoria. For some reason, I am playing better in the Euroleague than in the Spanish League. If you look at the... more