Ratiopharm Ulm
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| Nickname |
Die Spatzen (The Sparrows) |
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| Leagues |
Basketball Bundesliga EuroCup |
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| Founded | 2001 | ||
| Arena | ratiopharm arena | ||
| Capacity | 6,200 | ||
| Location | Ulm, Germany | ||
| Team colors | Black, White, and Orange |
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| Main sponsor | Ratiopharm | ||
| Head coach | Thorsten Leibenath | ||
| Website | www |
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| Uniforms | |||
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Ratiopharm Ulm, officially stylized asratiopharm ulm, is a professional basketball club that is located in Ulm, Germany. The club has two teams, one professional team, which plays in the Basketball Bundesliga, the major German professional league and one youth team, which plays in the so-called NBBL (Nachwuchs Basketball-Bundesliga). The home arena of the team is the ratiopharm Arena, an indoor sporting arena with a capacity of approximately 6,000 spectators.
The mascot of the team is a rabbit, which resembles Bugs Bunny and is called "Spass" ("fun"). The main sponsor of the team is the pharmaceutical company Ratiopharm. The team colors are orange, white, and black.
The club was founded in 2001 after the previous professional basketball team in Ulm, run by the sports-club SSV Ulm 1846, became insolvent and had to resign from the league. Dr. Thomas Stoll and Andreas Oettel, the current CEO of the Basketball Ulm/Alb-Donau GmbH, which is the owner of the club, bought the license of the former team and started a second division team with the name of Basketball Ulm GmbH. After playing in the second division for five years, the team qualified for the Basketball Bundesliga in 2006.
In the 2006–07 season, led by Headcoach Mike Taylor and Assistant coach Rainer Bauer the team headed into their first season in the Basketball Bundesliga as the team with the smallest funds and the smallest arena in the league. With just two new players for the starting five, the team was seen by the media and many experts as the team most likely to be relegated to the second division again after the season. But due to a well-rehearsed team, with only a few players changed in the off-season, the team had some big upset wins and remained in the league with a 16-18 record. At the end of the season point guard Austen Rowland had the league's best assists per game rate and power forward Jeff Gibbs became the best rebounder in the league and was nominated as a starting-five player for the All-Star game.
Still a club with one of the smallest funds in the league, the team experienced some major changes in the pre-season of their second year in the Bundesliga because starting point guard Austen Rowland and shooting guard Jonathan Levy left the team while starting small forward Emeka Erege received a serious injury during an exhibition game. Nevertheless, the team was ranked twelfth in the league after 16 of 34 games with a 9-6 record.
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