Three freshly-realigned brackets debut this week in the 2015 DODDS-Europe boys basketball championship tournament, scheduled for Wednesday through Saturday at sites around Wiesbaden, Germany. Here’s a look at each division’s top contenders.
Division I
Two weeks ago, the Patch Panthers appeared to be cruising towards a dominant undefeated regular season and a matching status as the presumptive Division I champion. While their unbeaten record survived to the end of the season, their aura of invincibility did not.
A narrow 51-50 victory over Ramstein applied the brakes to the Panthers’ runaway momentum, recasting Patch as a deserving, but not unbeatable, top seed in this nine-team tournament.
Even that is something of a surprise given the unproven roster the Panthers brought into the season. While the program claimed the last two Division I European titles, few current Patch players had anything to do with that accomplishment. The revamped team could have just as easily slid into divisional obscurity.
Instead, the Panthers might be better than the perimeter-heavy group that won the 2013 and 2014 titles. This Patch group is more balanced, from playmaking point guard Pablo Paradis to linchpin wing Holten Sparling to frontcourt duo Colin Whitten and Robert Braswell.
While Ramstein’s upset bid fell just short, the Royals still rank as Patch’s most substantial threat. Ramstein, itself sporting a largely new rotation, is the only other Division I team to beat each opponent on its schedule; it’s only other loss, a 47-46 defeat to archrival Kaiserslautern, was effectively avenged with a 46-39 Royal win in the rematch two weeks later.
While its hands are dirtier, Kaiserslautern still merits mention as a legitimate title threat. The Raiders have been inconsistent, splitting two games each with Ramstein and Wiesbaden while losing handily to Patch, but they have enough talent and depth on hand to plausibly pull off a win in any game they encounter this week.
Members of the next tier of this top-heavy division will need a lot of things to go well to find their way into the title picture. Wiesbaden pulled itself out of a late-season freefall with a desperately-needed 49-43 win over Kaiserslautern on Feb. 7, a decision that ended a shocking seven-game losing streak for last season’s runner-up. Four combined losses to Kaiserslautern and Wiesbaden make Lakenheath a championship longshot despite its 10-4 overall record.
Vilseck gained confidence from a four-game late-season winning streak but was brought back to earth by a final-weekend sweep versus Patch.
The new Division I entries, meanwhile, are unlikely to be major factors in their large-school debut season.
Both Vicenza and Naples took losses to Vilseck and Patch when the two German schools came calling in January, and SHAPE has struggled to compete against like-sized competition all winter.
Division II
While Naples and Vicenza have moved on, the road to Division II glory still appears to wind through Italy.
Saturday, American Overseas School of Rome completed a season-ending 11-game winning streak with a pair of wins over Naples. The Falcons haven't lost in over two and a half months; their only losses were a pair of opening-weekend blowouts to Aviano that are looking more like statistical outliers every day.
The AOSR team that will headline this Division II tournament is unlikely to be routed - or maybe even beaten - by anyone. While beating every Italian team in every division save for Aviano, the Falcons also dipped into German competition for wins against Ansbach and Hohenfels.
As impressive as AOSR has been, Aviano maintains that mental edge over the Falcons until proven otherwise. The Saints have been hit-and-miss against the non-divisional foes on their schedule, but they too handled Ansbach and Hohenfels in January and also twice routed Marymount to keep their Division II record clean.
The wild card here is Rota. The Spain-based school has just four DODDS-Europe games on its record this winter, but they're impressive; in January, the Admirals traveled to Netherlands and came away with two solid wins apiece against AFNORTH and Bitburg. It remains to be seen, however, if that small sample size of success can extrapolated into a sustained tournament run against stronger competition.
Black Forest Academy, meanwhile, is on the cusp of contention after pulling off two head-turning regular-season upsets against Division I Wiesbaden. But doubleheader splits with Ansbach and Hohenfels relegate BFA to the middle of the divisional pack entering the postseason.
Division III
Were they still in Division II, the Alconbury Dragons would likely find themselves in the thick of the above-mentioned title scrum. Instead they’re back in Division III, and at this level the view is far less cluttered.
Alconbury enters the tournament with a 10-2 record, a staggering body of work for a Division III team that played a total of six games against upper-division opponents. Its only losses came in the first weekend of the season against Division I Lakenheath; the Dragons haven’t tasted DODDS-Europe defeat since Dec. 6.
While the competition is less overwhelming at the small-school level, at least one major threat exists. The Dragons appear to be on a collision course – from opposite extremes of the continent, no less - with Sigonella. The Jaguars too have admirably navigated a daunting schedule, splitting with upper-division Italian opponents Naples, AOSR and Vicenza while sweeping Aviano.
Division II transfer Baumholder and defending champion Brussels lurk as potential disruptive forces to a projected Jaguar-Dragon final.
Twitter: @broomestripes
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