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 In its first season ever playing international competition, PGE Turow Zgorzelec is without doubt the biggest surprise among the would-be ULEB Cup champions at the Final Eight in Turin. This small-town club from southwest Poland deserves its new status as much as any team - and maybe more. The fact that Turow did not play ULEB Cup home games in its own country - needing a bigger arena across the Czech Republic border to meet competition requirements - makes it easy to assert that this team has overcome the most obstacles to reach Turin. Its history made it an even less likely candidate to crash the Final Eight. Turow was founded as a sports club in 1948, but didn't open its basketball section until 1965. Since then, however, it has developed some of Poland’s top players, including Mieczyslaw Mlynarski, who holds the Polish League single-game scoring record with a 90-point performance, and center Jerzy Binkowski. Turow made it to the first division for awhile, but then labored in obscurity for many years, playing in the Polish second and third divisions. Even when Turow won the Polish second division regular season in 2003 and was offered a wildcard entry to the top league, but the club rejected it, saying that it wanted to earn its promotion on merit. It would need only one more season to do so. Despite a tumultuous first season back in the top flight, featuring roster and coaching changes, Turow survived. With Mariusz Karol at the helm, the team climbed the ladder to finish the season in fourth place, losing to eventual champion Prokom Trefl Sopot in the playoff semifinals. By the time the 2005-06 season rolled around, basketball fever had hit Zgorzelec. Even while unable to duplicate its previous results, the team remained popular with its fans and returned to the domestic playoffs. The big change came in the summer of 2006, head coach Saso Filipovsk was hired and a new roster featuring Andres Rodriguez, Dragisa Drobnjak, Thomas Kelati, Robert Witka and Vjeko Petrovic – all of whom remain with the team – was put together. Together, they adopted Filipovski mantra – "The star is the team" – and Turow finished second in the Polish League regular season.  The club then swept Stal Ostrow in the first playoff round and shot down Slask Wroclaw 4-1 in the semifinals to earn a chance to fight for its first Polish crown. Alas, defending champion Prokom stood in the way and kept Turow from the title, but with that taste of success also came a chance to play in the ULEB Cup. Turow did not waste the opportunity. Rather, it earned a Final Eight spot by reeling off seven straight victories to win its regular season group and by surviving two tough elimination rounds, in the first one giving up any pretense of homecourt advantage to Czech champion Nymburk. Its road to Turin has been long and arduous, but there is every reason to expect that Turow will seize this opportunity in the same way that it has grabbed other recent ones, with both hands!
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ULEBCup.com
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