Belarusian basketball players are extremely stable.

Women's Euroleague in da house. All the most interesting about the first matches in 2017

UMMC Women
Tatyana Likhtarovich
Dynamo Kursk Women
Ekaterina Snytina
Anastasia Veremeenko

The holidays are over and basketball does not sleep. Today ended the last match post-New Year's tour.

I do not want to present the material in the usual way: the first game went like this, the second like this. Therefore, I will do it differently. I'll tell you about the most interesting in the last round, and about our Belarusians.

Play like Praguesorry like a bee

Before the start of the Women's Euroleague season, all the laurels of unexpected endings and stubborn struggle were given to the Italian team Famila Schio. Famila established itself as an unprincipled winner in the endings a la the Belarusian team, but they did not lose, but scratched out the victory with dignity. But this year, another club seriously thought about taking the palm in such a mini-tournament. USK Praha expressed deep concern from the very beginning about the dominance of Russian teams in the Euroleague. In the end, the basketball players of the Czech club began to tear and throw, located at the top of the table. Even some matches with losers took place on a pleasant note of ignorance of the final score – everything was decided as usual in the last minutes of the fourth quarter.

The post-New Year match against Famila Schio was supposed to decide who would be the most interesting team, at least in Group A. Marta Shargay was trying to take the maximum number of rebounds and she didn’t care that her main job was to control threes. Laia Palau ran back the whole match with a straight face: either making interceptions or giving passes; how lady gaga sings p-p-poker face. The basketball players of Famila tried for a very long time to do something suitable, but Sonya Petrovich told them firmly: No!; and Shargay scored a super important three. Yes, and the low-post of the Italians was flooded with tears of pain due to the absence of Isabel Yakubu.

The Prague club is a kind of alternative to the FGM, only for women and in Europe. I am not hinting that USK Prague will take the title in the near future. No, It is Immpossible. Because there is UMMC, Dynamo Kursk and the same Fenerbahce. You can go on and on about what the Czech club lacks to become No. 1 in Europe. The Prague club plays small ball – an easy-going five, ready to throw and score. Natalya Heikova is perhaps the only coach in the Euroleague who actively uses this variation of the start, and even does it successfully.

black stripe covers «Hatay» Ekaterina Snytina

The leadership of Khatai tried to do everything possible to end this nightmare. Well, as everything possible, and in general what a nightmare? They just changed the head coach – sometimes the management sees the problem only in this.As a result, the Turkish championship, along with the Euroleague, was enriched by one more woman coach. And Khatai never got out of the streak of failures that caught the club after the victory in the President's Cup over Fenerbahce Nastya Veremeenko back in mid-autumn 2016.

It cannot be said that Snytina became the only leader in the team, but pulling Khatai in terms of earning points is excellent, or almost excellent. Basketball games with 19 points and career-high assists are beaten by games with 15 percent field goals. In such matches, Snytina spends half an hour, but other basketball players work for her – i.e. earn points, Katya's success in team interaction is not pleading. Usually, in recent games, Courtney Parish takes on this role, pushing her opponents under the ring with her size.

Ultimately, the change of coach did not help Khatai in any way. Defeat follows defeat. With such success, the Turkish club Snytina will even fly past the Eurocup.

Maria Vadeeva is the new star of world basketball

Russian basketball successfully began to crawl out of the cesspool with the gaining experience of foreman Andrey Kirilenko. The brightest spot in women's basketball in Russia was Maria Vadeeva. I won’t deny that she has shown up since a young age at various tournaments and championships, but this summer’s transfer to Dynamo Kursk has become an incredible prospect for all sides of Russian basketball.

Once upon a time, about five years ago, Sparta K near Moscow was still showing signs of life, and even earlier, top world athletes played there. It was there that Maria Vadeeva was brought up under the patronage of her parents, former basketball players, Alexei Vadeev and Olga Melnikova. If we delve further into the biography, then Vadeeva's godmother is Helen Shakirova – the basketball gods ordered Masha to be an athlete from birth. In fact, the Vadeev family flirted with their daughter under the third, maximum, fourth number. Kind of a twister, but in a good way. However, this did not happen: Masha waved her height and fell in love with the position of the center to a disgrace. In this role, Vadeeva Jr. was flirted with in the last years of her contract in a club near Moscow. And then Dynamo Kursk decided to take the young basketball player under their cozy wing, where a terribly good line-up was already assembled with McCutrie, Ogwumike and Cruz. The question was how much time and opportunities will Vadeeva be given by the coaching staff under Lucas Mondelo? We didn't have to wait several years for an answer, as is usually the case with young and promising people. In the Euroleague 20 minutes on average, 12 per game with 60% accuracy + rebounds and assists and very few turnovers. True, everything is not good with fouls, but it comes with experience. But now Maria Vadeeva compared to superheroes.

Kursk Dynamo is now claiming the championship, the matches are easy or almost easy. With Fenerbahce, a couple of rounds ago, there was a chance of a sad loss, but fate decreed otherwise, and Nastya Veremeenko sadly looked at the final score on the scoreboard. Almost the same situation was with USK Praha. And the rest of the teams remained outsiders and a warm-up for a more serious opponent. Such an outsider for the Kursk club was the team of Tatyana Likhtarovich Gyor. Bad days happen, and for the Hungarian club Lichtarovic they happen all too often. Maria Vadeeva scored 22 points (11/11, 100%), while Gyor lost the match -35 points.

Veremeenko reminded that she is also a star

A couple of times I have already thrown in phrases that Nastya Veremeenko is stalked by all sorts of French women. You can take it skeptically or extremely negatively. We can say that they are trying to protect our Nastya. It can be argued that this is a basketball norm: Fener has a healthy squad, it is possible to leave leaders on the bench or alternate their appearance on the court, or play with youth. For the most part, that's what happens. There is an American Lavender, who replaces Veremeenko on the floor. There is Sandrine Gruda. Sandrine reserved a place in the starting XI at the same time she signed with Fenerbahce. I tend to the fact that Veremeenko gets playing time a little less than it was before. This is not as critical as it seems at first glance. But all these shuffles in the Turkish championship and the Euroleague seem to be a hint.

In the first match of the Euroleague after the New Year, Nastya came off the bench and began to prove that she can be the most effective player on the court. In addition to the 18 points scored, she reminded everyone that she can throw three-pointers. To block shots by Verameyenka an attitude has already formed at the level of “nothing surprising, but cool to see” – Nastya blocked the standard two times. In general, our Belarusian once again confirmed her professionalism and experience.

Here's Epupa for you!

France has been associated with great basketball talent in recent years. However, at the level of the national team, it is difficult to use these talents – the national team cannot punish Spanish/Serbian/American women and take gold medals anywhere. A bit of a lie, because it came out at the 3×3 basketball championships. But this is not the level where French women should win. Sandrine Gruda is approaching 30, while France slows down on silver.

Minimal steps are being taken in the French club championships, where they have prepared a really cool replacement for the outgoing generation of the Celine Dumerc national team. It is impossible to do without mentioning the best point guard of women's European basketball. But even she found a replacement in the person of Olivia Epupa.

Epupa at the level of youth tournaments stood out from the rest of the basketball players: it's all about growth.Empup is a small basketball player, even by the standards of playmakers. Therefore, the Frenchwoman improved all the skills: from the speed of movement on the site to the pass, from crossovers with jeb/Euro staples to lai-ups and three-point. Olivia Epup plays for Esb Villenev-D'Ask, going out in the starting five, but is not a clear leader among his teammates. More precisely, I was not. In the Euroleague, she began to create incredible things, though not every match, but does it regularly. And in this environment she gave out a real “bomb” of glasses and interceptions. She spent more on the site than all the other partners on the team and buried the Hungarian “Shopron” with 19 points and the 6th interceptions. On duty and hunting, Olivia forgot that I could give Passes to her comrades from the French club and decided all the moments alone. In general, France can sleep calmly, and Dumerk plan to end his career.

Without «Hopes» Now nothing

“Hope”, which has lost a couple of key and solid players after the offseason, continues to hold the bar, following the UMMC. In the first match of 2017, basketball players from the Orenburg club broke the Spanish Aenida.

This confrontation could be called Match of the Day. Aenida with a comfortable advantage (home game and soft toys) The leading in the total amount of half the match. The basketball players of Hope managed to do twice as many losses than rivals. And the Spanks did not want to take advantage of the obvious mistakes of their Russian friends. In turn, the Russian club only on Fast Breaki realized almost 20 points. And, of course, problems with the implementation itself arose in most cases among the hostesses of the arena. The match turned out with a pumped up atmosphere, a bunch of errors and the struggle under the ring. A classic match that decided something for both teams. In this case, it was a struggle for second place in the group B.

Try to beat Fox

UMMC continues to win and this is not news. If the Kursk Dynamo has a gorgeous composition, then the Yekaterinburg team is phenomenal. There is always a question: can star basketball players play in one team? It seems that this question does not arise in the UMMC in principle. Griner, Taurazi, Torrens, Toliever, Little, Nolan, Barich, etc. organized the match after the match. More recently, the Lisitsa took the Russian Cup to Yekaterinburg, the plans are still in the championship of Russia.

Everything goes the same in Euroleague. An incomprehensible defeat from the Spanish Aenida was replaced by a strip of victories. Probably, the fault of Diane Taurazi, who returned to the camp UMMC only after the first Euroleague matches. By the way, Roster of the Yekaterinburg team constantly undergoes changes: at first Taurazi came to Russia, then Petrakova left to hang out to Candice Parker. The latter nevertheless returned from its trip to California, but spends a minimum of time on the site.Everything goes to the American five, not counting the Spaniard Sancho Little.

Taurasi still takes full responsibility. Against SSS Polkowice, the American decided that she would throw only three and out of 12 attempts she hit 4 times. Brittney Griner terrorizes opponents under the basket on defense and kills on offense. Christy Toliver cheats everyone in the mid post by moving into an arc and shooting deadly 3s. Actually, UMMC works as a well-coordinated mechanism. Every basketball player is an important cog. By and large, this applies only to legionnaires. And Russian players appear on the court so rarely that you start to forget that UMMC is a club from Russia.

I waited and waited, but Evgenia Belyakova does not demonstrate anything sensible. And the man won the championship of the Women's NBA, only he never entered the court. And the Russian sports media squealed from another overseas champion. In general, what is in the WNBA, what is in «UMMC», no useful action was found. An interesting situation emerges.

Evelina Kobrin stirred, but Vistula flies

Remember it was such a joke Polsha can't go to spacewith? Here nowPoland can't play basketball. After the epic failures of the women's team wherever possible, Polish clubs decided to repeat the successes of the national team in European tournaments.

I don’t even want to talk about Polkowice, which, with a great squad, manages to lose to every team on its way to the Euroleague. Vistula is still trying to keep the bar and finally not disappear from the radar of basketball Europe. The living legend of Polish basketball Evelina Kobrin helps the club from Krakow in this. Kobrin spends almost the entire match on the court, manages to score a double-digit number of points according to individual statistics and pick up the same number of rebounds. But all this does not help the polka to reach a double-double, and the most important thing is to give Wisla a victory.