Besançon

Besançon Basket Comté Doubs, the professional side that carried the city through the 1990s and 2000s, went under in 2009 after running out of money, and what plays in the Palais des Sports Ghani-Yalouz now, Besançon Avenir Comtois, grew out of that liquidation as local basketball people put together a new structure to keep a club in the city at all.

The name BesAC still traces itself back to 1929. The bulk of what the city has to show for itself in the sport belongs to the club that no longer exists: Besançon Basket Comté Doubs won the Pro B title twice, in 1995 and again in 2008, and took the National 2 championship in 1993, honours that sit with the old badge rather than the current one.

The club sits in Nationale 1, the third tier, still wearing the blue and white that ran through the old BBCD sides, and still meeting Dijon when the fixture list allows it, a rivalry that has less weight now that the two clubs are rarely in the same division. The Palais des Sports, with its 4,200 seats, remains the constant through all of it. Recent squads have leaned on players such as Mykal Riley, and the work in front of the club is the ordinary work of a rebuilt side: hold its place in Nationale 1 and try to climb back toward where Besançon basketball used to stand.