BCL Gameday 2 recap: Nanterre stuns champion Rytas Vilnius, ALBA and Peristeri complete comebacks

Gameday 2 of the 2026-2027 Basketball Champions League regular season left no doubt in one game and came down to the wire in two others. Nanterre took the reigning champion to the woodshed, 93-65. ALBA Berlin had to claw its way through a grind before taking over down the stretch to beat Igokea m:tel 90-79. And Peristeri, down 15 at the half, ripped off a comeback for the ages to edge Itelyum Varese 85-82 on the road, with Luis Scola watching from the stands. Three games, three different endings, and the early shape of groups A, G and D is already coming into focus.

Nanterre blows out the reigning champion

Rytas Vilnius walked into France with an eight-game winning streak and the BCL champion's crown. Both got left behind. Nanterre kept a slight advantage in the first half, then blew the game open in the third quarter, winning it 31-15 and ballooning the lead to 32 points (87-55) late. Final score: 93-65. By the league's own recap, it ranks as one of their best games since they began playing in the BCL.

The box score tells the story of a team that simply ran out of answers. Nanterre out-rebounded Rytas 54-38, out-assisted them 26-13, and buried them in the paint, 60-26. Rytas had dropped 40-plus points in the paint in back-to-back BCL games coming in. Nanterre flipped that strength upside down.

Xavier Castañeda ran the show, piling up 15 points and 9 assists. Hugo Yimga-Moukouri, one of the candidates for Best Young Player of the season, chipped in 13 points on a tidy 5-of-6 from two-point range. J'Wan Roberts bullied his way to a double-double — 15 points, 12 rebounds, 7 of them on the offensive glass. Rytas captain Arturas Gudaitis battled to the end with a 10-point, 13-rebound double-double, but it wasn't close to enough.

The streak is dead at eight, and Group A is left with a real question: can the champions regroup before the gap with Nanterre grows into something bigger?

ALBA Berlin puts the clamps on late

ALBA Berlin's second straight win didn't come cheap. Igokea m:tel actually led for more of the night than the home team did inside Berlin Arena, and Pedro Calles' club needed a real answer to shake them loose. They found it late, slamming the door with a 24-12 run in the fourth quarter to turn a back-and-forth battle — 14 lead changes — into a 90-79 final.

Joe Wieskamp took over down the stretch, draining all three of his 3-pointers in the fourth quarter alone on his way to 19 points. Justin Bean matched him blow for blow with 17 points, also going 3-of-6 from deep. "They were physical. We knew we had to do a good job boxing them out, and I thought overall we did a good job. It was a grind-it-out type of game, and we came out on top," Wieskamp said.

Igokea's Lazar Stefanovic refused to go quietly, pouring in 21 points in the losing effort, and the Bosnian side's upset bid earned plenty of respect even in defeat. But ALBA's offense keeps rolling at home — the German league champions have now scored at least 84 points in six of their last seven games at Berlin Arena. With multiple players able to close games on their own, ALBA showed it can lean on more than one scorer to decide games late.

Peristeri survives after an 11-0 run

Itelyum Varese marked its first BCL home game in a decade, and for a half, the party was in full swing. The Italians rode a big first half from Hunter Hale — a familiar foe of Peristeri from his days with AEK BC and Promitheas Patras BC — to a 15-point cushion, 52-37, at the break. Hale finished with 20 points, but the celebration didn't last.

Peristeri had other ideas. The Greeks chipped away all second half, then landed the knockout blow with an 11-0 run in the fourth quarter before surviving a wild, back-and-forth finish to escape with an 85-82 win. Will Carius paced Peristeri with 18 points, while Ty Nichols — fresh off a 33-point explosion over the weekend in Greece — ran the floor to a 10-point, 10-assist double-double and buried a dagger 3-pointer off the dribble in the fourth.

The win keeps Peristeri unbeaten across every competition this season, BCL and domestic play alike, now four straight to open the year. For Varese, it's a tough pill after building a 15-point lead on the night the club finally came home to BCL play after ten years away. Group D now waits to see whether Peristeri's hot start has staying power as the schedule gets heavier.