Club profile: Banvit Bandirma

Aug 15, 2014 by Eurocupbasketball.com Print
Dusan Cantekin - Banvit Bandirma - EC13 (photo VEF Riga - Mikus Klavins)

Banvit BandirmaBanvit Bandirma comes off another solid season and has great hopes in the 2014-15 Eurocup. Banvit, coached by Dimitris Itoudis and led by Sammy Mejia, reached the Eurocup Last 32 and was first at the end of the Turkish League regular season, but could not add a title to its roll of honors. The club's run started back in 1994, when it was founded by workers at Banvit, a meat company in Bandirma. It competed in local leagues until moving up to the regional level in 1998. The club made it to the Turkish second division in 2001 and became the 2004 second-division champion and earned the right to play against the very best teams in its country. Banvit shined in its European competition debut by reaching the 2005 FIBA Europe Cup semifinals and made it to the 2006 Turkish League playoff semifinals. Banvit kept competing hard both at home and in Europe and returned to the Turkish League semifinals in the 2009-10 season. Its Eurocup debut came in the 2010-11 campaign and one year later, it finished a tiebreaker short of a quarterfinals berth. In the 2012-13 season, Banvit narrowly missed out again on the Eurocup quarterfinals and advanced to the Turkish League finals, downing Besktas and Anadolu Efes in the process. This season, the pride of Turkey's Marmara Region hopes to take on its greatest challenge yet – to keep fighting hard in all competitions, but also to start collecting titles on the way to the next well-deserved step forward.
2013-14 SEASON RESULTS
Eurocup: Last 32
Turkish League: Semifinalist