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I would never have gone with this tip if Ivkovic was still in charge at Efes, but things are different now that Caki is there. Efes started playing defense as the new coach gave players slightly different roles. They have not lost in five games since Caki took over and more importantly, they played very good defense in each of those. They never conceded over 71 in regulation time and limited Darussafaka to 71 in the last round of regular season. Team under at Darussfaka and their first half under were good options as well but I'm going with the first half total under in the end to avoid a blow out or something like that. I said many times that defense is Darussafaka's strong suit but that they can hit a lot of points if a chance for it presents itself (QF with Banvit for example) but I expect a tough game today. These teams played 4 games this season to finish at 86 and 77 at half time in the league (the first one relatively unimportant, the second one not important for Darussafaka). They finished the first half at 63 and 60 in EL and that is more important than the league games. I don't want to look back at Efes' games from EL since Ivkovic was in charge back then but Darussafaka's EL games do mean something. These are their half time results in the first round - 63 with Sassari home, 63 Brose away, 81 Unicaja away, 67 Sassari away, 61 Brosse home, 58 Unicaja home, 73 Maccabi home. Second round - 61 Unicaja away, 63 Efes away, 80 Panathinauikos away, 78 Zvezda, 72 Kuban away, 65 Unicaja, 60 Efes... We see a lot of unders in tough games with tough opponents or in the games they tried to slow the opponents down (Sassari).
Efes open games a bit slower since Caki took over and that worries be a bit. They were at 77 home with Usak, 80 with TED away, 77 with Darussafaka home, 83 in the first one with Gazi, 66 in the second one. But I adjusted the stake to that. I expect the importance of the game to make both teams try hard for the start which is why the offensive ends shouldn't be very efficient. Details

Soler-Espinosa didn't deserve to go out to the court today. She lost the third round of qualifications to Siniakova in straight sets, but got here as a lucky loser. She lost a set and 0-3 to Arcangioli in the first round. Going even further back, she came to RG with a 3-match losing run, where she didn't go over four games per match. First to Tsurenko, to Vesnina and then the younger Pliskova sister. All comfortably within this margin. And those can't even be compared to Bacsinszky. Actually, the Spaniard doesn't have a single Top 100 win this season, and the only tournaments where she managed to get wins were Rio and Bogota.
Bacsinszky is defending last year's semis here. She's coming after beating Suarez-Navarro, Makarova, Petković, and having the best ranking of her career. She got a title in Rabat, too. She only struggled against Kozlova and Babos there, but those are in a momentum where they can be dangerous to anyone. The Swiss dealt with Wickmayer and Tsurenko in the first two rounds in Rome. Tsurenko by six games, and Tsurenko left Espinosa with four games a month before that. It's all just on paper, sure, but it shows that Bacsinszky will get an easy win to start the tournament. She said she won't underestimate anyone, and if she does that, Soler-Espinosa just doesn't have the skills or the form right now to harm the Swiss in any way. Details

Cervantes has been doing a good job. After a few successful challengers, he used a few chances at ATP level but mostly against players outside of Top 50. He didn't do great against players of better quality (expect for Kyrgios in Estoril in what was Kyrgios' first clay court match). We need to note that Kohlschreiber beat him by 6 games, Carreno by 6, 10 and 4 and Vesely by 8. All of those happened on his favorite surface (clay court). When it comes to the wins, only the one over Delbonis from Sao Paolo stands out. Thiem is better than all of them and what he did last week suggests we can expect some great things of him. Grantd, he played the final on Saturday and apparently had some shoulder problems but he said that he would be fully fit for RG. I expect him to start fierce and try and save some energy. He beat Almagro in Australia by 11 games and has wins over Mannarino (by 8 games), Seppi (by 6) and Sousa (by 7). All of them are better than Cervantes, who is now playing only his second Grand Slam ever. I expect Thiem to win two sets by double breaks and that is why this handicap seems like an option we shouldn't miss out on. Details