Quarterfinals start now: Donar Groningen to host SYNTAINICS MBC
- marisnoviks
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
The 2026 ENBL quarterfinals start on Tuesday, March 17, as the eighth seeded Donar Groningen host the 2025 German Cup winners SYNTAINICS MBC.
Playoff experience: both teams have qualified to the ENBL playoffs for the first time.
Donar Groningen celebrated 75th anniversary on March 8, 2026.
Two days later Donar won the Round of 16 home game against BK Opava, 103-86, and advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-3 record.
Jason Dourisseau is the 2026 ENBL Coach of the Year.
SYNTAINICS MBC defeated BK Olomoucko, 98-83, to reach the quarterfinals with a 8-1 record.
Spencer Reaves is the 2026 ENBL Most Valuable Player.
The winners of the best-of-two home and away series will advance to the Final Four where they will face the best team in a duel between Dinamo Zagreb and Manchester Basketball.
Series history: Donar Groningen (6-3) will face SYNTAINICS MBC (8-1) for the second time.
SYNTAINICS MBC defeated Donar Groningen on the Epiphany Day, 106-104.
Spencer Reaves led the hosts with 29 points on 7/16 shooting from the three point line.
Khyri Thomas scored 25 points and dished out seven assists.
Austin Luke had 23 points, 13 assists and eight rebounds for Donar.
Donar Groningen are 4-1 on the home floor after four consecutive wins over TalTech/ALEXELA, Fyllingen Lions, Alkar Sinj and BK Opava.
SYNTAINICS MBC are 3-1 on the road after wins against Fyllingen Lions, Bristol Flyers and Alkar Sinj.
National championships: Donar Groningen are 12-9 at the BNXT league.
Donar won at Den Helder, 88-86, on March 12, and then lost against Den Helder, 90-92, on March 15.
Austin Luke had 19 points and 16 assists in a win, followed by a 20 points, 11 assists performance three days later.
Damian Forrest scored 30 points in a loss.
SYNTAINICS MBC are 8-16 at the Bundesliga and recently posted their first win since Round 10 success against Braunschweig.
Weissenfels team defeated ALBA Berlin, 99-68, on March 15, behind 23 points by Spencer Reaves.
Marcus Foster posted a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds.
Charles Callison shined with 16 points and nine assists.
Know your referees
Crew chief: Michal Kuzia (Poland) – Orlen PLK referee from 2017, FIBA referee from 2023; has worked at the Alpe Adria Cup from 2018.
Umpire 1: Tijmen Last (Netherlands) – Dutch top league referee from 2017, a four time consecutive Dutch Referee of the Year, FIBA referee from 2019.
Umpire 2: Bence Szilvagyi (United Kingdom) – Super League Basketball referee from 2023.
Observer (at the video): Oskars Lucis (Latvia).
ENBL access: follow the game on Youtube
2026 quarterfinals | local time | CET
Tuesday, March 17
19:30 | 19:30 (8) Donar Groningen – SYNTAINICS MBC (1)
Wednesday, March 18
19:00 | 19:00 (7) Dziki Warszawa – Iraklis BC (2)
Wednesday, March 25
19:00 | 20:00 (5) Manchester Basketball – Dinamo Zagreb (4)
19:30 | 19:30 (1) SYNTAINICS MBC – Donar Groningen (8)
Wednesday, April 1
19:45 | 18:45 (2) Iraklis BC – Dziki Warszawa (7)
19:30 | 19:30 (4) Dinamo Zagreb – Manchester Basketball (5)
to be confirmed
00:00 | 00:00 (11) Riga Zelli – CSO Voluntari (3)
00:00 | 00:00 (3) CSO Voluntari – Riga Zelli (11)
April 21-23, Final Four
Location and final dates to be confirmed
2026 ENBL playoffs and bracket
Live blog: the playoffs are coming
I want to close my engagement with this beautiful account by reflecting on what Rebecca's experience at Kufunda suggests about the nature of learning itself — because I think it offers a profound challenge to the dominant model of education that most of us have internalised. In the conventional educational model, learning is something that happens to you: a teacher transmits knowledge, a student receives it, and the success of the process is measured by how accurately the student can reproduce what was transmitted. At Kufunda, learning seems to work on a completely different principle: it emerges from doing, from being together, from encountering difference, from making something with your hands alongside people whose lives are very different from your…
The World Café and open space methodologies mentioned in Rebecca's account are worth explaining for readers who may not be familiar with them, because they represent a genuinely different philosophy of meeting and decision-making from the conventional formats most people have experienced. World Café is a structured conversational process in which participants move between small tables, building on each other's ideas across multiple rounds of conversation, so that by the end of the process the collective intelligence of the whole group has been woven together in a way that no single presentation or panel discussion could achieve. Open Space Technology is even more radical: it creates an agenda-free gathering in which participants self-organise around topics they care about, with no…
One of the things I find most striking about Rebecca's account is the honesty with which she describes her initial disorientation — "I felt completely lost," "a fish out of water" — and the way that disorientation gradually transforms, through direct experience and genuine participation, into something that feels like belonging. This arc of transformation is not incidental to the Kufunda experience; it is, I suspect, central to its pedagogical design. The Oasis Games, the combi journeys, the community walks, the park clean-up — none of these activities would have the same transformative power if the participant arrived already knowing what to expect, already comfortable, already at home. The productive discomfort of genuine cultural encounter is the engine of the…
The year-end retreat that Rebecca describes — where the Kufundees gathered to evaluate, appreciate the ending year, and plan for the next one — is a practice that I think every community organisation, every team, and every family would benefit from adopting. The combination of evaluation, appreciation, and forward planning in a single intentional gathering is a complete cycle of collective reflection that honours both what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. The fact that it also served as an opportunity for Rebecca to discover "the many and interesting projects that are going on on a regular basis" suggests that even within a community, the full richness of collective life is not always visible to every member…
The permaculture and herb processing work mentioned at the end of Rebecca's account deserves more attention than a passing reference, because it points to something fundamental about Kufunda's philosophy: the integration of ecological knowledge with community development, of working with the land as an inseparable part of working with people. Permaculture is not simply a set of gardening techniques — it is a design philosophy that applies principles of ecological resilience to human systems, asking how communities can organise themselves to be as regenerative, as self-sustaining, and as mutually supportive as a healthy ecosystem. The fact that this work is part of the Leadership Programme curriculum alongside flowgames and World Café suggests a vision of leadership that is rooted in…