2002–03 ULEB Cup

The 2002–03 ULEB Cup was the inaugural season of Europe's secondary level professional club basketball tournament, the ULEB Cup, which is organised by Euroleague Basketball. The 2003 ULEB Cup Finals were played between Pamesa Valencia and Krka, and won by Valencia, their first title in a European-wide competition. As the winners of the 2002–03 ULEB Cup, Valencia qualified for the European top-tier level 2003–04 Euroleague.

Team allocation
A total of 24 teams from 10 countries, instead of the initial 32, participated in the 2002–03 ULEB Cup. The majority of champion teams that could not play in the Euroleague chose to compete in the 2002–03 FIBA Europe Champions Cup, apart from the champions of Russia, Netherlands and Belgium. The inaugural ULEB Cup also didn't feature teams from Greece, Lithuania and Israel as they chose to play in FIBA's competition.

Distribution
The table below shows the default access list.

Teams
League positions after Playoffs of the previous season shown in parentheses:

Round and draw dates
The schedule of the competition was as follows.

Regular season
In each group, teams played against each other home-and-away in a round-robin format. The four first qualified teams advanced to the elimination rounds, while the two last teams were eliminated.

Elimination rounds
In the elimination rounds, teams played against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, with the overall cumulative score determining the winner of a round. Thus, the score of one single game can be tied.

In the draw for the elimination rounds, the four group winners and four group runners-up were seeded, and the four group third-placed teams and four group fourth-placed teams were unseeded. The seeded teams were drawn against the unseeded teams, with the seeded teams hosting the second leg. Teams from the same group or the same country could not be drawn against each other.

Bracket
Source: ULEB Cup

Eighthfinals
The first legs were played on 4 February, and the second legs were played on 11 February 2003.


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Quarterfinals
The first legs were played on 25 February, and the second legs were played on 4 March 2003.


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Semifinals
The first legs were played on 18 March, and the second legs were played on 25 March 2003.


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Finals
The first leg was played on 15 April, and the second leg was played on 24 April 2003.


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