Hi, everyone, I am Brad Oleson of Caja Laboral, and here I am again, a year after I first blogged, coming back at you for another attempt by my team, Caja Laboral, to reach the Final Four. Last year at this time, we were going on the road against CSKA Moscow, and that didn't work out for us, as they won the first two games and then we could only get one back at home in Vitoria. In Game 4, we were up 10 points with 7 minutes left and got ambushed down the stretch. That was a lesson for all of us. I hope we can apply it now as we face another best-of-five series against Maccabi. If we learned one thing last year, it was how important the home-court advantage is. Now we have to use it. We have great fans and they can help us take care of that edge.

You think we live on the edge a little? Last year we had to rally from 12 down in the fourth quarter of the last Top 16 game to make the playoffs. This season, we lived on the edge at the end of every round. We got in a hole losing five game in the regular season and had to win our last three games. In our Top 16 group, we started 2-0 and everyone thought it's be easy. Then we lost to Lietuvos Rytas on the buzzer in a wild game and that changed a lot. We had to go on the road and beat them in the last game, but thankfully, we got it done. You could say I am very surprised we got the home-court advantage for the playoffs after all the ups and downs we had. But we stuck together, and everyone bought into the coaching strategy and the philosophy, and we made it this far. Now it's time to take advantage of this opportunity.

Our team might look from the outside like a bunch of gunslingers, since we hit so many three-pointers, but the truth is that... more