What are the Best International Leagues for Women Basketball Players?

At the end of the WNBA season, there is the inevitable dispersal of American players to various European leagues overseas. Some of these leagues, however, are better than other ones. It's much more prestigious to be playing in the French League than the German League. But which leagues have the best talent and which deserve to be called the best in the world?

I decided to go to the Eurobasket.com website. Every now and then, they create a list of the Top 100 Teams in European women's basketball. They use their own calculations to determine their top 100 teams.

I decided to give each country's teams a certain number of points based on their location on this list.

#`1 - 8 points
#2 - 7 points
#3-4 - 6 points
#5-8 - 5 points
#9-16 - 4 points
#17-32 - 3 points
#33-64 - 2 points
#65-100 - 1 points
not on list - 0 points

Using these point totals, we come up with a country total - we take all teams on the list which belong to a given country, assign each a point total, and sum up the point totals of all teams to get the country point total.

Here are the final results:

Spain 30
Russia 26
France 22
Italy 18
Poland 17
Turkey 14
Hungary 12
Czech Republic 11
Romania 10
Serbia 10
Lithuania 9
Slovakia 9
Belgium 6
Israel 6
Slovenia 6
Ukraine 6
Greece 5
Bulgaria 4
Croatia 2
Germany 2
Bosnia 1
Latvia 1

The next question is: "do the results pass the smell test?" One odd result is that Spain is at the top of the list, and not Russia.

Part of the reason is that the point-scoring system awards not only leagues that have individual strong teams, but leagues that have depth as well. For example, there are very strong teams in the Russian League, but that league doesn't have as many teams as Spain, and even the losing teams in the Spanish League are pretty damned good. Russia has the #1 and #2 teams on the list (Ekaterinburg and Spartak Moscow) but Spain has the #3 through #5 teams (Ros Casares, Perfumerias, Rivas Ecopolis). You could make a good argument that the Liga Femenina is at least as strong as the Russia Superleague A.

The top six teams are exactly what I'd expect: after Spain and Russia come France and Italy, traditional women's basketball powers. Following those teams come two women's leagues that are making a play for international dominance - the one in Poland and the one in Turkey. It seems that just about anyone who is any good plays in one of those top six countries.

After the top six, one comes to countries that might have two or three good teams, usually with one or two WNBA players on the roster. I think of Slovakia, which has Candice Dupree and Angel McCoughtry, along with Erin Lawless. At the bottom of the list are leagues like Greece which are on shaky ground and where you hear the worst stories - teams folding and players not getting paid.

There are some Asian leagues that deserve to be ranked somewhere: the ones in China, South Korea and Japan come to mind, as well as the Australian League where Lauren Jackson is playing. But until a new "Worldbasket" website is created, we'll just have to make due with the given list.

Euroleague 8th Finals 2/2009 - Pécs 68, Krakow 64

Iziane Castro Marques tries to put Krakow on her back.

With Krakow winning the first game, the best-of-three series moved to Hungary. Down on the ropes in the fourth quarter, Pécs made a stunning fourth-quarter comeback in a must-win situation to win 68-64, tying the series at 1-1. Dalma Ivanyi's triple-double helped save the Hungarian team from elimination. The deciding Game Three will take place on Wednesday, February 10th.

The game report, box score, play-by-play and a small photo gallery are all here.

Pécs had the start of a good game. Pécs led 24-19 at the end of the first quarter, and built up a double-digit lead, 38-28 by halftime. However, Krakow began to come back despite the support of 3000 spectators - a 3-pointer by Marta Fernandez with 2:44 left in the third quarter put Krakow in the lead and the Polish team led 54-51 at the end of thirty minues.

But in the fourth quarter, Pécs rolled out to a 15-3 lead to start the quarter, leading the visitors 66-57 with five minutes left in the game. Krakow began their comeback, and would hold Pécs to just two points for the rest of the game -however, seven of those points came from free throws and Krakow could not buy a basket. Iziane Castro Marques went 0-for-3 in the last five minutes, including a couple of 3-point attempts in the final ten seconds.

The player of the game was Dalma Ivanyi, who carried the Pécs team on her back. She had 24 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, going 4-for-5 from the 3-point line. Add four steals to that and it was a helluva game.

Ewelina Kobryn scored eight points and five rebounds for Krakwo. Janell Burse and Marta Fernandez had 16 points each.

Iziane Castro Marques scored in double-digits, but took a lot of shots to do it:

14 points
5-for-13 shooting, including 3-for-10 from the 3-point line
One rebound, one assist
29 minutes

Eurobasket Summer League 2009: Sign Ups for New Players in New York

The Eurobasket Summer League has its registration for female players on June 9-10th in New York City.

According to the website at USBasket.com (linked from Eurobasket.com, the #1 stop for news about how WNBA players are doing in the off-season) the event is to sign up players for the Eurobasket summer league.

According to the page "Over 46% of the players who participated in the ESL in 2008 landed professional contacts in forty (40) different leagues around the world this season." Of course, you should take this with a grain of salt:

a) these numbers might refer to men's basketball players only, and
b) the contract signing might not have had anything to do with playing in the ESL, and
c) this 46 percent covers anything that might be considered a professional league. You might end up in the French A league, or the Kazakhstan B league, or anything in between.

The cost of signing up is $399 per player for the New York women camp. Players are responsible for their transportation to the city and hotel expenses. The ESL will provide special hotel rates for players.

The Pleasant Dreams Blog does not endorse the ESL - we're just putting the information out there. Contact marketing @ eurobasket.com if you're interested.

Greek Women's A1 26/2008 - Paleo Faliro 74, Paghiakos 66 (OT) - A Time of Troubles

While the regular season of the Liga Feminina in Spain was coming to an end with great interest, the regular season of the Greek Women's A1 League was finishing with little notice by even the Greek media. Paleo Faliro (17-9) finished of Paghiakos (8-18) by a score of 74-66 to end the regular season in Greece - but the league's problems were grabbing the attention.

Kastoria (0-26) had stopped playing. Siemens (5-21) has declared bankruptcy. And now, we learn from George Manousidis that Aris Holargos (8-17) was packing in it. Here is his report from Eurobasket.com:

Earlier on this year the team was purely dismantle as the American players left due to financial discrepancies with he team, the Head Coach left for the same reason, the Greek American Power Forward Panagiota Karagiorgos (190-F-84, college: Concordia (NY)) left the team too and then all the other professional girls couldn't survive so they left the team. The last two months the team is playing with girls U18 but right now and in the game in Larissa against Olympiada Larissas, the management couldn't pay the bus to travel from Athens to Larissa so the federation decided to dismiss the team from A1.
It's quite pity for a team like Aris Holargos who ended last season in the third position and went to the fianl four of the Greek cup.

I agree with the assessment of Eurobasket. Something needs to be done to bring the Greek basketball house in order - but I don't know what.

What will happen is unknown. However, Paleo Faliro and Paghiakos managed to survive. Here is the box score of the game.

Paghiakos, playing at home, appeared to be in control. They managed to win the first quarter 22-18 and hang on for a halftime score of 35-33. However, they couldn't escape from Paleo Faliro, as Paghiakos remained up by two points - 50-48 - with 10 minutes left to go. At the end of regulation, Paleo Faliro managed to tie the score at 60-60, and then scored 14 points in the overtime period to steal the victory.

It's so frustrating not to have any better information than an ordinary box score. I don't even know when the playoffs will take place in Greece, or how many games will be played.

Paghiakos hit 45 percent of their field goal attempts compared to 41 percent by Paleo Faliro. Paleo Faliro made up for it by out-rebounding Paghiakos 45-27, with 20 offensive rebounds. Paghiakos would also be the leader in turnovers, turning the ball over three more times than the visitors.

Paghiakos

Sonja Dafkou: 19 points, 7 rebounds, 4 turnovers.
Vaso Tsarouha: 13 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists, 6 steals.
Viki Tassopoulou: 8 points, 4 rebounds.

Paleo Faliro

Teana Miller: 25 points, 12 assists, 4 assists, 5 turnovers.
Kristin Haynie: 9 points, 7 rebounds, 6 steals.
Karen Mourd: 2 points in just 2:46 of play.

Euroleague 1/2008 - Ros Casares 93, Gdynia 51

Gdynia would be watching a lot of this.

Euroleague is about teams from different countries and different leagues playing each other. Sometimes, these leagues vary widely in quality. I don't know what it says about the Polish league, but Ros Casares's 93-51 defeat of Gydnia was the second biggest win of the year, next to CSKA Moscow's defeat of French team ESB Lille Metropole 96-44.

Laia Palau of Ros Casares said after the game, ""This is only our first game this season, but It's funny to play like this. I think that our fans are very happy with our basketball on the court. There was a party!" I can imagine why she would say that, because a 42 point win is less a win and more a glorified practice session. Gdynia made the first two free throws and never saw the lead again.

The boxscore for the game is right here.

Ros Casares shot 45 percent to Gdynia's 38, but it was in the sheer quantity of shots that Ros Casares took that made the difference. Gdynia turned the ball over thirty seven times.

Ros Casares made 37 baskets. Gdynia took 45 shots the entire game. There's no way you can win with that kind of difference.

Erika de Souza scored 21 points and had 11 rebounds, a double-double. Five players scored in double figures. Delisha Milton-Jones only scored three points for Ros Casares.

Ivana Matovic scored 15 points for Gdynia. Alana Beard, starter for the Washington Mystics, scored 11 points in 26 minutes of play. Jennifer Fleischer, a former center for the University of Pennslyvania, was held scoreless by Ros Casares over 16 minutes.