French basketball has a strong history in Europe, with the top showings including Limoges CSP winning the 1993 EuroLeague and SIG Strasbourg finishing second in the 2015-16 7DAYS EuroCup. In this, its first season of international play, JL Bourg en Bresse has already opened a lot of eyes, too. Just four years removed from France's second division, the team from east-central France between Geneva and Lyon has made up for a lack of experience by using togetherness and savvy to become a rare EuroCup debutant to walk tall into the Top 16.
Bourg was founded in 1910 and its basketball section in 1947 with the first local Ain department championship coming in 1956. Bourg jumped to what is now the fifth division in 1963 and earned promotion in 1969. The club began producing better young French talent such as Jean-Luc Roediger and Thierry Maitejean and the first American players came to the club in 1973. Bourg was relegated back and forth between the fourth and fifth divisions for the next couple of decades, but made a big jump in 1994 by winning the fourth-division title with top names such as Jerome Monnet and Jean-Luc Tissot.
Tissot, the then-21-year-old captain, was just starting a legacy at the club that would later see him become its head coach. Also in 1994, a five-year-old Bourg-en-Bresse native by the name of Antoine Diot would join the club's youth ranks, where he would remain until 2004 when he left for the INSEP/CFBB academy. In just its second season in the third division, Bourg captured that title and entered the second division in 1996, thanks in part to future French international and Olympic silver medallist Crawford Palmer.
The club reached the top French League in 2000 by winning the second division title and stayed there for seven seasons, highlighted by a trip to the French Leaders Cup final in 2006. Among the players who were with Bourg in the top flight were future All-EuroCup selection Tariq Kirksay in his European first-division debut, Victor Samnick, Branko Sindelic, Jerome Schmitt, Ludovic Chelle, Andre Owens and DeRon Hayes – the father of future NBA lottery pick Killian Hayes.
After finishing 10th in its first French League season, Bourg dropped to last place in 2001-02 but was not relegated. The team finished 11th in 2005 and 12th in 2006, though just one win below the last playoff team. Current sports director Frederic Sarre was head coach from 2004 to 2006. When his successor, Francois Peronnet, was let go in December 2006, his replacement was Nedeljko Asceric, father of current player Luka Asceric. Nonetheless, the club finished 17th and was dropped to the second division, where it stayed seven seasons before earning promotion again in 2014, with Sarre having returned as coach in 2012. His 2013-14 team included Philippe Braud, Kevin Corre, Jerome Sanchez and future EuroLeague standout Devin Booker, who was named the MVP of the 2014 playoffs.
It was a short-lived stay in the first division, though, as Bourg was relegated after the 2014-15 season. Sarre stepped down in January 2015 and was replaced by Tissot until the end of the season. The club underwent a major shift in the summer of 2015 that can still be felt today. Management brought in two key players: Maxime Courby, a U20 European Championship winner in 2010 who had played for new coach Christophe Denis at Rouen the previous season; and big man Zachery Peacock. Both have remained with Bourg ever since. Together with mainstay Braud, they won the French ProB Leaders Cup crown in 2016.
The next major cornerstone was laid that summer with the choice of Savo Vucevic as head coach. The Montenegrin play-caller had guided Spirou Charleroi to a pair of Belgian League crowns and the EuroCup quarterfinals in 2005 and also had helped AS Monaco climb out of the lower ranks to the second division in 2014. In the first season under Vucevic, Bourg claimed the second-division title thanks also to the additions of Garrett Sim and Youssou Ndoye. Peacock was named the season MVP.
Back in the French first division, Bourg beefed up the roster with Chase Simon and Lance Jeter, showing right away that it was ready for the challenge. The team missed the post-season by one victory, finishing in ninth place in 2018. Peacock led the league in scoring and index rating and was named MVP. For 2018-19, Vucevic added a third key player for its future in 33-year-old veteran Zack Wright. Bourg finished ninth again in the French League, but also reached the 2019 French Leaders Cup final, losing to Strasbourg. For the 2019-20 season, Vucevic brought in a fourth pillar of the current team as veteran Danilo Andjusic brought with him five seasons' worth of EuroLeague and EuroCup experience. Meanwhile, Pierre Pelos rejoined Bourg, with whom he had played during the 2016-17 promotion season, but had remained in the second division to help Provence make the jump to the top flight in 2018-19. Last season, Bourg was on its way to finally reaching the playoffs, holding fifth place in the French League standings with a 16-9 record, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused the season to end prematurely.
For this, its debut EuroCup season, Bourg sought strong leaders, led by former EuroCup champion and All-EuroCup First Team selection Alen Omic, who also has five years of EuroLeague experience. Also new to the team were Thomas Scrubb and Luka Asceric, while Croatian national team big man Ivan Buva was added during the season. Armed with a long-time core and new blood, Bourg showed its mettle right away, finishing the regular season with a 6-4 record, including sweeps of Partizan NIS Belgrade and Umana Reyer Venice, to reach the Top 16. The showing also resulted in Bourg being named as the Most Surprising Team in the EuroCup's mid-season general managers' survey. Not many true debutants to the EuroCup reach the Top 16 right away, but Bourg has already made history and plans to establish itself as a continental force for years to come.