The ultimate week for Turkish Airlines Euroleague fans is upon us and it began with a fury. The last two Euroleague champions started their respective beast-of-five playoffs series with convincing wins on Tuesday and two more series get underway Wednesday as for the first time ever, the best eight teams in the competition will be in action twice each over the course of four consecutive days as part of the race to basketball’s promised land, the 2012 Turkish Airlines Euroleague Final Four in Istanbul. FC Barcelona Regal held off Unics Kazan 78-66 led by Pete Mickeal to get a leg up on that series. Barca’s versatile forward went for 22 points and 7 rebounds as the Spanish champs built a 28-14 second-quarter lead and stood tall the rest of the way – even after the visitors trimmed the gap to 5. The result gives Barcelona three wins in as many games against Unics this season. Later, in a rematch of the 2011 Euroleague title game, Panathinaikos pounded Maccabi Electra 93-73 in a game that wasn’t as close as the already lopsided score would indicate. Nick Calathes scored 10 in a 22-0 run that bridged the first and second quarters and put the Greens ahead for good. A string of threes to open the second half made it a 30-point game and Panathinaikos never looked back. Euroleague MVP Dimitris Diamantidis paced the hosts with 15 points and 8 assists. In Wednesday’s opener, CSKA Moscow hammered Gescrap BB 98-71 for the Russian champs’ 11th straight home win. Nenad Krstic led six CSKA scorers in double figures with 18 points. The game was close for 10 minutes, but CSKA pushed out to a 10-point halftime lead and put the game away early with a dominant third quarter. The last series to tip off was in Italy, where Olympiacos Piraeus rallied past Montepaschi Siena 75-82. After the Reds’ star Vassilis Spanoulis fouled out with less than five minutes to go and his team down 3, Acie Law and Joey Dorsey came through with big plays and Georgios Printezis hit some clutch baskets to snatch the win. Printezis scored 20 for the Reds, who won Game 1 against the same Montepaschi in last season’s playoffs, but then the Italian champs reeled off three in a row to win the series. These teams meet again Friday.

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