BallinEurope, the European Basketball news site

Chatman: "Hell, yes, i'm back!"

It’s a good news/bad news day for fans of Spartak Moscow region women’s basketball as announced by FIBA. The Spartak front office has confirmed that returning for 2010-11 will be head coach Pokey Chatman and her entire staff; members of all four champion Spartak squads Sue Bird, Irina Osipova, and Marina Karpunina; Anete Jekabsone-Zogota and Sonja Petrovic. Tatiana Shchegoleva, who took the season off, will return to her former club in 2010.

However, Spartak will be suffering a pair of big minuses, with Diana Taurasi and Sylvia Fowles expected to sign elsewhere; such a void would make “UMMC Ekaterinburg favorites heading into the Russian competitions.” Painful news for Spartak fans, for sure, who have surely earned a steady rivalry with Ekaterinburg, having met them in 2009-10 in the Russian Cup finals, the Euroleague Women semifinals, and the Russian Superleague championship series (Spartak took the former two, while UMMC swept the best-of-five Superleague final.)

Spartak general manager Steve Costalas has promised in the meantime that “the club is negotiating with two other excellent players that will be major contributors if they sign.”

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For The Continent, quite a bit of important basketball action went down this weekend. In the ‘States, the best of Team USA faced off against the world in the Nike Hoop Summit game; in Spain, arguably the two best women’s teams on the planet meet for the FIBA Euroleague Women final; the German domestic league awarded its cup; and another titanic battle with predictable finish went down in Barcelona. (Yes, there will be Ricky Rubio highlights.)

• In El Classico, a.k.a. FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid – which this season is beginning to turn into La Pesadilla Grandes for The Whites – Barcelona again overcame by the deceptively close score of 78-73. Since Baskonia took care of fifth-place Cajasol, 78-65, Madrid finds its sole possession of second place on the ACB table gone.

As for the highlights, has the Human YouTube Clip added another weapon to his ridiculous arsenal? Check out Rubio *rejecting a freaking shot* at 29 or so seconds in. Also for Rubio fans, check out the sequence beginning at about 1:17 which starts with an alley-oop off the glass and ends with a graven Ettore Messina looking like he’s watching the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls out there.

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The 2009-10 Euroleague Women final four games go down tonight, with Spartak Moscow region facing off against UMMC Ekaterinburg and Ros Casares meeting Wisla Can-Pack. BallinEurope offers a few tidbits and links to prep you for some ladies’ b-ball.

For Wisla Can-Pack, the story is the team itself. To describe this team’s 2009-10 Euroleague campaign as “memorable” would be both disservice and massive understatement. The compressed version goes something like: team joins Euroleague Women at last minute thanks to some schadenfreude gifted by CSKA Moscow; teams goes 8-0, extends mark to 10-2; in semifinals, team gets past pre-season near-favorite MiZo Pécs easily; team then survives 15-point blowout and two nail-biters to overcome Frisco Sika Brno; team finally finds itself facing Final Four hosts.

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Representatives of the WNBA and the Phoenix Mercury have announced a trade in that league, with a three-team deal seeing Candice Dupree, most recently of Good Angels Kosice, go to Phoenix.

As press material summarizes, Dupree “ranked first in all of Euroleague competition in rebounding [at 11.0 per game] and third in scoring [at 18.9 ppg] while shooting 49.6% from the field in 39.1 minutes per game. She was named to the FIBA Euroleague Women All-Star Game, where she recorded 11 points and grabbed a game-high nine rebounds in 23 minutes as a starter alongside new teammate Diana Taurasi.”
Official press release runs below the break.

(Phoenix Mercury Basketball Inc.) – Phoenix Mercury General Manager Ann Meyers Drysdale today announced the acquisition of Chicago Sky forward Candice Dupree in a three-team deal that sent guards Cappie Pondexter and Kelly Mazzante to New York. Chicago acquires Shameka Christon and Cathrine Kraayeveld from New York to complete the trade.

“We’re ecstatic to be adding Candice Dupree to our already-stellar core,” said Meyers Drysdale. “Of course, we had to make a sacrifice in order to acquire a player of Candice’s caliber. She brings a combination of size, strength and athleticism that few possess and will add another potent weapon to our starting lineup.”

“We wish Cappie and Kelly both the best of luck in their continuing careers. Both have been tremendous contributors for this organization the past few years and we thank them for their efforts and service.”

In 2009, Dupree led the Sky and ranked 11th in the WNBA in scoring (15.7 ppg). She ranked second in the league in total rebounds (268) while recording career highs in rebounding (7.9 rpg), three-point field goal percentage (.387) and free throw percentage (.785). The 6-2 forward tallied nine double-doubles, third-most in the league. She was named to the third All-Star game of her career (2009, 2007, 2006) and was named a starter for the Eastern Conference.

Most recently, Dupree spent the 2009-10 offseason playing professionally overseas for Good Angels Kosice in Slovakia.

“Candice has proven herself to be one of the most dominant post players in the world,” said Taurasi of her new teammate. “She’s an aggressive defender and a great rebounder, and adding her to our roster gives us a great chance at defending our title in 2010.”

Dupree owns career averages of 15.6 points and 7.3 rebounds in her four WNBA seasons with Chicago. She has started every game for the Sky in three of the last four seasons, and has missed just one game in her career (2007). The Tampa, Fla. native was originally drafted by the Sky with the sixth overall pick in the 2006 WNBA Draft.

Pondexter has played all four of her WNBA seasons with the Mercury after being selected by Phoenix with the second overall pick in the 2006 WNBA Draft. The Rutgers product owns career averages of 23.9 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.1 assists in 129 career games (all starts). She is a three-time All-Star and was named the 2007 WNBA Finals MVP.

Mazzante spent the last three of her six WNBA seasons with the Mercury and established averages of 4.9 points and 1.6 rebounds in 99 games (seven starts) for the Phoenix.

The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream yesterday announced they’d acquired the rights to BallinEurope fave Team Hungary/MiZo Pécs guard Dalma Iványi from the San Antonio Silver Stars for center Michelle Snow.

Iványi is currently good for a line of 11.1 points, 3.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game in the Hungarian league; in 13 games’ worth of Euroleague Women play, she was good for 7.6 ppg and a sliver under 7.5 rpg. Iványi really crashed the sports headlines last week when she went for a triple-double of 24/11/10 against EL final four team Wisla Can-Pack.

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Here’s a quick YouTube fix for you if you need it this morning: Highlights and post-game revelry from Wednesday night’s FIBA Euroleague Women final eight game which saw Wisla Can-Pack advance by defeating Frisco Sika Brno, 78-73. Either way, the match was fated to be the last EL game in Poland, with the ladies now going into the Final Four playoffs; Janell Burse and the Wisla women did not disappoint.

Damn, they get *up* for their girls in Krakow – no joke, these devotees have got to be the closest thing to the Pionir faithful that EL Women has…

(Video follows the break.)

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Burse drives Wisla Can-Pack

In the final remaining game of the Euroleague Women quarterfinal playoffs going down tonight between Frisco Sika Brno and Wisla Can-Pack, it’s not a question of whether an improbable run will continue but rather *which* improbable run.

Brno has faced elimination on three occasions in this tournament already, the most recent coming in game two of this round last Wednesday when the Czech side defended homecourt and, oh, what the hell, here’s the entire FIBA Europe writeup:

Frisco Sika Brno earned a decisive game three in their Quarter-Final Play-Off series with Wisla Can-Pack Krakow, handing their Polish opponents an 87-72 loss.

Brno dominated the third and fourth quarters, leading by as many as 24 with five minutes left in the game.

Eva Viteckova led the way for the Czechs with 25 points on five of eight shooting from behind the three-point line. Taj McWilliams added 20 points and nine rebounds.

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Salamanca's big dreams up to Lyttle

The Euroleague Women’s “Eighth-final playoffs” conclude tonight with three best-of-three series looking to be settled. Teams already set to play in EL Women quarterfinals include Spartak Moscow region, Fenerbahce Ulker, UMMC Ekaterinburg, Good Angels Kosice, and Ros Casares.

The winner of tonight’s Halcon Avenida-Bourges Basket match will see Ros Casares in the next round; surely to be considered a favorite to take the entire competition, Ros Casares has outscored opponents by an average 16 points in 15 Euroleague Women games played thus far. A quarterfinal pairing of Ros Casares against Halcon Avenida seems like a dream matchup of star teams – except that the Salamanca side has been stumbling as of late.

Despite a roster featuring Team Spain sensations Marta Xargay and Alba Torrens together with all-around threat Sancho Lyttle (averaging 17.7 points, 10.9 rebounds, and 2.4 steals per in 12 Euroleague Women games), Halcon Avenida finds its backs against the wall despite a recent five-game win streak in which Salamanca thrice outscored opponents by 18 or more. The last of that opposition was Bourges, who pulled off the gritty home win over the heavy favorites last Friday.

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Burse has Krakow on top

With four games down in the ten-game FIBA Euroleague Women 2009-10 first round, the playoff picture is taking early shape and more than a few surprises – pleasant and otherwise – have graced play thus far. In the “disappointing” column can definitely be entered Mizo Pécs 2010, early considered one of the favorites to be playing in this league’s Final Four, is a limp 1-3 and has dug itself quite the hole behind Beretta Famila Schio, Halcon Avenida Salamanca and Wisla Can-Pack Krakow. (In fact, as the very pride of Hungary in international team sport, the Hungarian women’s basketball teams have combined for a depressing 3-7 in Euroleague play.)

Krakow may be considered this edition’s Cinderella story; thanks to the CSKA Moscow club’s financial difficulties, the ladies’ Red Army team had to drop out of the 2009-10 season just before it began. Enter Krakow, originally slated for Eurocup Women play and consequently deemed to be “top ranking team not involved in the tournament” when CSKA bailed. All the Krakovians have done thus far is go 4-0 while averaging just under 82 points per game in the last three; Janell Burse is running up one heck of a statistical season for Krakow, with 14.8 points and a league-leading 12.5 rebounds per game.

Completely unsurprising is the season Diana Taurasi is putting together with Spartak Moscow region; leading the league in scoring at 23.0 ppg, the perpetual Team USA representative is in the top ten in seven Euroleague Women statistical categories. As a result, Spartak has won three of three with a 21-point average margin of victory – imagine Taurasi’s numbers if she’d been kept on the court for more than 10 minutes per game.

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Phew! Hopefully people were betting big point spreads in the Euroleague’s first game day as Montepaschi Siena, Barcelona, Olympiacos and Zalgiris notched easy victories by an average of more than 27 points. More on Euroleague as well as bigger than Jordan; a new basketball film; new players soon coming to Europe; a German star talent; and why Euroleague did not want to watch Maroussi-CSKA highlights.
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