Valencia Basket returns to Barris Nord more than twenty years later

Valencia Basket men's team returned to practicing this morning to begin preparing for their next matchup, which will see them visit the court of Hiopos Lleida for the first time. The game, part of Round 28 of the Liga Endesa, will be played on Sunday, April 20 at 12:30 p.m.

Although it will be the first time the "Taronja" squad faces this young club—founded in 2012 and currently playing its first season in Liga Endesa—as visitors, it won’t be their first time at Barris Nord.

They played on that court four times during the early 2000s when the now-defunct Club Esportiu Lleida Basquetbol competed in the ACB, earning two wins and two losses. Now, twenty years after their last Liga Endesa game in Lleida, Valencia returns to face one of the league’s hottest teams—the burgundy squad has won four of its last five games—in a showdown that features the two best perimeter players in the league since March, the month when Hiopos Lleida’s new star, shooting guard James Batemon, arrived. The new player for the Lleida team is averaging 21.3 PIR index rating per game, making him the second best guard in the league during that span, after Valencia’s Montero, who is averaging 23.1.