VALENCIA (Jeff Taylor's Eurovision) - It's March, ergo, it's time to be swept away in the madness of basketball. It's time to dream of the possibilities and not just for those fans of teams in the NCAA Tournament.

It's time to dream for those of you that live in countries that are going to play at the FIBA EuroBasket, even if your team is Romania.

Yes, for the first time since 1987, Romania will play in the Final Round of a EuroBasket. What's better is they will host Group C, which means Romania's fans are going to come into play.

Let's be honest. Unless you come from Romania, the first thing most of us think of when it comes to basketball in that country is Gheorghe Muresan, the center who played for both the Washington Bullets and the New Jersey Nets.

Muresan was drafted late in the second round of the 1993 NBA Draft by Washington.

What made him even more famous was My Giant, the 1998 movie he starred in with Billy Crystal.

Muresan, among the NBA's tallest ever players at 2.31m in height, was also a Romania international.

Before going to the NBA, he was a Cluj-Napoca teammate of current Romania boss Marcel Tenter.

Romania celebrate the fact that one of their own played in the NBA and became famous, yet they want people to know there is much more to basketball in their country than Muresan.

"It's an honor for us to have a former NBA player who was our teammate in the national team and at Cluj," the 47-year-old Tenter told me. "But in our time, we also want to be proud of our results with the national team, and also with clubs. And we want to prove ourselves at this EuroBasket."

How much of a long shot are Romania? Their men's team has been in the international wilderness for so long that they do not have a FIBA ranking.

Beating Spain and Croatia in Group C probably won't happen but games against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Montenegro look winnable to me.

I remember something Romania international Titus Nicoara said recently.

"It's going to be tough but in the end, nobody knows," he said. "It's open, I think. In front of 10,000 people, you never know what can happen."

Vlad Moldoveanu and Romania almost qualified for EuroBasket 2015

Romania may be better than people realize. They finished second behind Latvia in their qualifying group for FIBA EuroBasket 2015 and narrowly missed out on the Final Round on goal difference with the other sides that finished second in their qualifying groups.

"We've been waiting for such a long time for this opportunity," Tenter said. "We know that even though we are the hosts, we are the underdogs of this competition because it's been such a long time since we participated in a EuroBasket, but we'll have our chance and we'll fight for it."

And it's going to be fun seeing how far they can go!  

Jeff Taylor
FIBA

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