Iziane Castro Marques Signs with Krakow

From Eurobasket.com:

Iziane Castro (183-G/F-82) signed a one-year contract with Wisla Krakow. The Brazilian shooting guard is currently playing in the WNBA for the Atlanta Dream. She tallies 14.4 points, 2.2 boards and 2.0 assists per game for the Dream. The Brazilian international played in the Seattle Storm and Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA. She also had stints in Russia, Spain, Latvia and France during her European career. Last season Iziane Castro started in Villenueve averaging 15.4 points, 2.3 boards and 1.9 steals per game in Euroleague. Later she moved Extrugasa in Spain, where she notched 20.5 points, 3.8 boards and 1.6 assists per game in the LFB.

So where does this put players for the off-season?

Iziane Castro Marques: Krakow, aka Wisla Can-Pack (Poland)
Erika de Souza: Ros Casares (Spain)
Ivory Latta: rumors are that Latta will sign with a team in Turkey
Shalee Lehning: no league - will finish degree at Kansas State
Sancho Lyttle: Perfumerias (Spain)
Michelle Snow: Dynamo Kursk (Russia)

I'll tell you about everyone else when I know more.

The Atlanta Dream and the 2009-10 Offseason

Here's what we know about our Dream players off-season.

Erika de Souza is returning to Ros Casares in Spain where she'll be playing in both the Spanish League and the Euroleague. (Euroleague and Eurocup are "superleagues" involving teams from multiple countries.) She played for El Ros last year as well.

Sancho Lyttle is moving to Perfumerias in Spain. She'll also be playing in both the Spanish League and Euroleague. Ros Casares and Perfumerias finished 1-2 last year in Spain; expect those Ros Casares/Perfumerias games to be big-time matchups.

Michelle Snow is leaving the Spanish League and playing for Dynamo Kursk in the Russian Superleague A. Dynamo Kursk will also be playing in Eurocup, which is a competition very much like Euroleague - Eurocup is the less prestigious of the two.

Shalee Lehning has already stated that when the season ends, she'll return to Manhattan, Kansas to finish up her degree work and graduate after Fall Semester 2009.

Angel McCoughtry Twittered on August 5th that she was still trying to "figure out where I may end up overseas". We don't know if she's received any offers just yet.

Everyone else, we don't know about.

Armintie Price played for top team Joventut in the Spanish League last year, but no word as to if she has re-signed with them.

Jennifer Lacy went all the way to Beijing in China last year. Lacy was very popular in China.

Ivory Latta played for a Turkish team last year before she was acquired by Maccabi Ramat Hen of Israel for a late season championship push. I expect Latta to definitely be playing overseas in 2009-10, but I don't know where.

Chamique Holdsclaw played for Krakow (Wisla Can-Pack) in Poland last year until an injury ended her season. Both sides mutually canceled her contract, and I don't know if Holdsclaw wants to return to Poland or not.

Iziane Castro Marques played in the French League before being acquired by Extrugasa of the Spanish League. Extrugasa was desperately trying to avoid relegation, but Castro Marques couldn't keep them from being demoted. She'll probably play overseas again.

Coco Miller played not for the Russian Superleague A, but Russian Superleague B team Spartak Noginsk. They must have paid her well. It's not often that foreign players agree to play for B-league teams in Europe unless they have no choice.

What I Got Is What There Is

With no posts yesterday, I'll give you what I can find.

1) France. There are hardly any pictures of the Union Hainaut-Calais game. The one above is a typical representative. No Chioma Nnamaka pics. Note the hot pink uniforms of Calais. The Atlanta Dream fans almost chose this hot pink color as our uniform color. We dodged a bullet.

2. Spain. I have not found a boxscore of a single Spanish league game. All I have is this report of a preseason game between Extrugasa and Perfumerias. Perfumerias won 81-79, but you don't get a box score which is annoying beyond all belief.

Tamera Young at least was on the starting five in this preseason game, scoring 11 points. No more info on Erika de Souza for now.The regular season starts October 4th.

3) Poland. The best coverage so far comes out of Poland, with complete box scores that are easy to find. However, there doesn't seem to be a gallery for the Rybnik-Jelenia Gora game. The other two games had galleries. I'd like to post a pic of Kasha Terry wearing her new #10 jersey.

4) Turkey. Hey, even the new schedule for the TBBL hasn't been posted yet. I suspect the season will start sometime in November, which makes me wonder how Ivory Latta and Alison Bales are occupying their time.

5) China. You wish. Jennifer Lacy is supposed to be playing for the WCBA this year, but I suspect that all WCBA games are played in the Forbidden City. Info on Lacy's games is nonexistent. Chinese society in terms of equality of gender opportunity is pretty amazing, but for some reason, Chinese men's basketball is more popular than the women's game. This has been commented upon by sociologists. I guess it's the whole Yao Ming factor.

6) Everybody else. Betty Lennox, Kristin Haynie, Ann Strother and Iziane Castro Marques still haven't finalized anything, or if they have, we've not heard of it yet. (Remember that Katie Feenstra will get married in the fall and probably won't play until after Xmas, if at all.)

As for posting other items, looking at my web hits is a very interesting exercise. By far, the #1 way people get to the Atlanta Dream Blog is looking for information about the 2009 WNBA Draft. I've posted some statistical analyses, but there's just no way I can elaborate on them. Hey, I've predicted the draft prospects...do you want to know anything else about the draft? I'll post the order in a separate post.

Regaring the WNBA Finals: I've found out something important about myself. Most WNBA fans have favorite teams other than the one they follow regularly, but I only seem to have one favorite team - the Atlanta Dream. Watching these non-Dream games...there just seems to be something missing from them. Now, Sophia Young's last second shot was wild and the fact that the Libkids came from behind to throw Detroit's quest for a WNBA Championship in jeopardy were both very compelling stories - but if I don't see Ivory Latta moving the ball up from halfcourt, it just ain't the same. I'll certainly watch the WNBA Finals...but I miss my Dream. So you might have to go to other blogs for "pulse-pounding WNBA action!" as Sufferin' Stan Lee might put it.

Ivory Latta to Turkey; Kasha Terry to Poland

Ivory Latta will be playing for Turkey in the offseason, according to SPMSportspage.com. After searching the internet far and wide, I found that she will be playing for a team called Ceylan Belediyespor. As of now, you can see her on the Ceylan team front page.

Ceylan finished 11-11 last year in the Turkey Women's A League. This was good enough to get them to the quarterfinals, but they were eliminated in the first round. Hopefully Ivory can put them over the top.

Kasha Terry will be playing for Utex Row Rybnik in Poland in the off season, according to 2X Inc, an agency that primarily represents women's basketball players. Rybnik finished fifth with a 14-10 record, but was knocked out by AZS Gorzow in the quarterfinals.

I'm going to add the link and create a new category called "Player Agents" and add the 2X Inc website. There are a ton of WNBA players represented by 2X Inc, including Jennifer Lacy. Lacy has not signed anywhere for the off-season as far as I know.

More on the Dream Overseas

A source who wishes to remain uncredited gives us some links to follow what the Dream were doing in the 2007-08 offseason. The rest of this post is his e-mail message to me.

(* * *)

Some updates on player signings for the upcoming winter season can be found at:

http://actionled.blogspot.com/

Lennox finished 2007-08 with Nadezhda (Orenburg) in Russia, averaging 22.2 ppg in 11 Superleague contests and pouring in 45 points in the regular-season finale against Shelen-ETK:

http://www.infobasket.ru/old_site/Game.asp?id=51382&l=2
http://www.basket.ru/index.php?dn=season&to=stat&id=6&ml=5

Statistics for Latta (Holon) and Terry (Ramat Hen) can be found here:

http://www.safsal.co.il/TeamStatPage57.aspx
http://www.safsal.co.il/TeamStatPage8.aspx

Bales (?????) left Dynamo very early last season after playing in just a couple of games (one Superleague, one EuroLeague):

http://www.basket.ru/index.php?dn=team&to=stats&id=39&ml=5&co=3651

Similar story with Strother and León, I believe. She departed in October and accepted a job on Kathy McConnell-Miller's staff at Colorado.

http://www.cubuffs.com/SportSelect.dbml?SPSID=3906&SPID=258&DB_OEM_ID=600&Q_SEASON=2007

The WKBL did not permit the signing of foreign players this past winter, with the explanation that they wanted to offer the Korean stars better preparation for the Olympics.

The peripatetic Iziane played for both TTT Riga (Latvia) and Hondarribia-Irun (Spain) during EuroCup play, then finished up with Brazilian club Ourinhos.

Érika will return for another season with Ros Casares.

Lacy played last winter with CCC Polkowice (Poland):

http://www.plkk.pl/index.php?p=clubs&id=6

Extrugasa Vilagarcia Signs Tamera Young

For those who don't know, Extrugasa Vilagarcia, a team in the Liga Femenina (Women's League) in Spain. This is from the Prodep website, which is an agency for high-level women's basketball players.

With the signing of Vika Sholokhova nine players that make up the first team, although in the daily work and the calls will be accompanied by the junior Arantxa Mallou, escort of Santiago which has been recently Fiche, and for some other player youth squad players. Arantxa Gomez and Mary Asurmendi fight for the title at the base. Sara Gomez is indisputable position in the escort and the great novelty is the eaves. Tamera Young, whose numbers in the WNBA are causing sensation, is the big bet of the team this year, but we must not forget the Bulgarian Jaklin Zlatanov.

Thanks for the heads up from an anonymous commenter. If you're with Extrugasa Vilagarcia or Prodep, let us know how Tamera does in the off-season!

P. S. How do you say "Pigtail Power" in Spanish? "Poder de coletas"?

2008: Looking Ahead to the Off-Season

So what do we have to look forward to when the regular season ends? What will happen is that the 2008 Atlanta Dream will scatter to the winds, as each of the players on the Dream looks for jobs overseas.

Where will everyone go? We don't know. News from European women's basketball is sometimes spotty, due to the language barrier if nothing else. Most of the data below comes from the WNBA itself, when they listed where all of their players were playing overseas at the end of 2007. As far as I know, we know nothing for sure since the end of the European/Asian seasons.

Betty Lennox: KV Imperial AEL (Cyprus). From what I understand, KV Imperial finished 14-0 last year. (I'm only beginning to decipher the complexities of European professional basketball.) Lennox, however, is not listed on the team's current roster.

Ivory Latta: Elizur Holon (Israel). Latta is not listed on the team's current roster. Elizur Holon finished 8-13 in the Israel League last year. Ivory posted about her experiences in Israel on the WNBA Blog. More about her signing here.

Kasha Terry: Ramat Hen (Israel). Terry is not listed on the team's current roster. Ramat Hen finished 13-10 in the Israel League last year.

Kristin Haynie: Vilnius (Lithuania). Haynie is still listed on Vilnius's roster. Vilnius finished an amazing 25-1 last year, good for first place in the Lithuanian League.

Alison Bales: Dynamo Moscow (Russia). Bales is not listed on the team's current roster. In a Q & A session, Bales talked about playing in Russia.

Katie Feenstra: Shinsegae (South Korea). Feenstra is not listed on the team's current roster. My understanding is that each team on the Women's Korea Basketball League is allowed to have one foreign player. The Shinsegae Cool Cats finished at 9-20 last year, in last place.

Iziane Castro Marques: Hondarribia (Spain). Since I can't read the roster, I don't know if Izi is on it or not. Hondarriba finished 9-17 in the Spanish League last year.

Ann Strother: Acis Leon (Spain). Strother is not listed on the team's current roster. Acis Leon finished 18-8 in the Spanish League last year.

Erika de Souza: Ros Casares Valencia (Spain). Erika is not listed on the team's current roster. Ros Casares finished 23-3 last year, good for first place in the Spanish League.

Jennifer Lacy is listed as playing for "Miejski", which is supposedly a Polish club, on the WNBA website. The problem is that there is no club called "Miejski" in the Polish league. If I can get to the truth here, I will.

As for Chioma Nnamaka and Tamera Young, both are rookies. We don't know where they'll be playing after the season is over, but we'll definitely be letting you know when we find out.