BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Though Verena Lehner will make women’s basketball history on Friday night as the first European woman ever to suit up for the Yale Elis, she has been barred from competition since 2008 due to what was deemed a violation of NCAA eligibility requirements.

The Austria-born Lehner was discovered to have played under contract for a team in the Österreichische Basketball Bundesliga (a.k.a. the AWBL) during the 2006-07 season, clearly a conflict of statutes that state would-be NCAA players may not have ever been signed to a professional sports contract. Legal representatives managed to successfully appeal to the NCAA based on the argument that Lehner had actually paid out more to the unnamed team than had been compensated her.

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BallinEurope has established a list of all National Champions in the various European leagues as they are known so far. If you have results to add or know who was named Final MVPs in a European league, feel free to add this in the comments so that we can update the list.

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We continue with our roundup of playoff action in various countries of the European continent. We come back to a short intermediate job of an ex-NBA player in Austria this time and give you of course the newest stories from the top leagues.

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Ivanhoe from Austria emails:

…as I live in Austria, I follow the Austrian League very closely. Last week, game 5 took place between Basket Swans Gmunden (the ULEB Cup Team who lost against Juventut, as you know) and Fürstenfeld.

In a crucial game 5, something strange happened. Fürstenfeld had posession up 1 and about 3-1/2 minutes to play in the fourth quarter. They lost the ball. Peter Hütter of Gmunden came up with the ball and headed for a fastbreak, no one near him for an uncontested dunk, but as he dunked the ball hard, the ball went through the hoop, bounced off his head and went out again. The ball never went through the net completly. Fürstenfeld gained control and hit a 3 pointer. Ball game. That’s not something that happens everyday.

Here is the video:

Let’s look up the FIBA definition for a made basket: A player scores when he manages to put the ball into the basket from above. To me, it looks like the player did exactly that. Now Ivanhoe says that the ball has to go through the net? All we know is that Furstenfeld went to the next round of the playoffs and Gmunden is out.

It may not be the biggest news in the European Basketball scene, but we try to cover also the lower level leagues or National teams here at Ball in Europe. And the reason why we speak about the Austrian National Team is the name of their new head coach.

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Did you ever hear of Peter Hütter? Or do you know the scoring average of Mathias Meyer? In fact, do you know what I am talking about?

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