in Poland, Basket Landes launches its sprint for sixth place

Un departure at 9.30 am from Mont-de-Marsan bound for Bordeaux, a stopover in Amsterdam for a landing at Lech Walesa airport in Gdansk, and an arrival at the end of the afternoon on the side of Gdynia. Apart from minor turbulence (a flight delayed by ten minutes and two lost luggage), the first Euroleague trip of 2022, in Poland, looked like a walk in the park for the players of Basket Landes and their staff, compared to the journey epic to rally and return from Kursk (Russia), just before the holidays.

The Landes delegation was even able to take advantage of a small scrubbing shoot to take their…

Un departure at 9.30 am from Mont-de-Marsan bound for Bordeaux, a stopover in Amsterdam for a landing at Lech Walesa airport in Gdansk, and an arrival at the end of the afternoon on the side of Gdynia. Apart from minor turbulence (a flight delayed by ten minutes and two lost luggage), the first Euroleague trip of 2022, in Poland, looked like a walk in the park for the players of Basket Landes and their staff, compared to the journey epic to rally and return from Kursk (Russia), just before the holidays.

The Landes delegation was even able to take advantage of a small scrubbing shoot to take their marks on the floor of the Gdynia Arena, where Wednesday January 19, at the end of the afternoon (6 p.m.), Basket Landes will try to confirm its success. of the first leg (79-70).

new faces

“We had them pretty well controlled,” recalls Julie Barennes. It was November 2, the date of the last victory of the Landaises in the flagship competition of continental basketball. “Since then, the Polish workforce has changed quite a bit,” underlines the Basket Landes coach. Arka Gdynia, 13 times champion of Poland, saw two leaders leave, the Swedish Klara Lunquist and the French Romane Bernies (returned to Lattes-Montpellier), picked up another (the Greek Pavlopoulou) and also changed coach.

For its part, Basket Landes recovered Lidija Turcinovic and Marine Fauthoux (injured on the outward journey), recruited Jillian Harmon, but will always be amputated on the wings of Sophie Cunningham (read elsewhere) and Céline Dumerc, who, ill, did not had played only two short minutes on the way. The American winger, on the other hand, had dazzled the Mitterrand space with her aggressiveness and efficiency by scoring 23 points (including a 13/13 on throws), her best performance under the Landes tunic to date.

“We will also have a completely different face, even if we have been playing with a stable framework for a little while, it will be another match”, admits the Landes coach, somewhat “in the fog” when it comes time to face a team Poland, which remains on a forceps success at home against Galatasaray (76-75), “but has not played since December 30. This same fog as the performance of the Landaises against Tarbes, Sunday in the Women’s League, only thickened, despite the victory (66-64) snatched thanks to a buzzer beater from Regan Magarity on a service from Marine Fauthoux.

A joke

“We can just say we won, but when we are ambitious as we are, we aspire to much better. It happened to us to find satisfaction in certain defeats in Euroleague, because on the bottom, we advanced collectively. But there, in the quality of the game and the intensity offered, we are far from the mark and there is no reason for that! “Will the video decryption of the” least successful match of the season “, which Julie Barennes described as a “joke”, hot, in the locker room, serve as a “lesson” for Marie-Ève ​​Paget’s teammates? Too early to say.

What is certain, on the other hand, is that they will have to raise their level of requirement by several notches to hope to impose themselves on the floor of the Poles, even if they are the red lanterns of the group. A last place which the champions of France could also temporarily inherit in the event of a defeat by more than nine points on the shores of the Baltic Sea. But with the approach of this clash between badly classified, the objectives of Basket Landes are necessarily located a little higher.

Sixth place

If with three victories behind Schio (4^e) four days before the verdict of the group stage of the Euroleague, the Landaises have given up on qualification, promised to the members of the top 4 of each group, they have not abandoned the ambition to seek the sixth place in the group – synonymous with transfer to the quarter-finals of the Eurocup – currently occupied by the Turks of Galatasaray (1), with one more success. Stambouliotes that Basket Landes will have the advantage of facing in their cauldron on January 30, between the trip to Girona (January 26) and the reception of Sopron (February 2), terminus of the qualifying phase.

“We’ll see what we can do and what will happen next, knowing that a lot of matches have been postponed due to the Covid, but if we want to keep a chance of going to the Eurocup we have to start by winning at Gdynia. All the girls are aware of it and we want to do it”, summarizes Julie Barennes, without forgetting to specify that in this post-South-West derby week, the priority of the club’s priorities remains the quarter-final against Asvel Lyon. , Sunday.

(1) Galatasaray must receive Girona and Schio and move to Sopron and Basket Landes

Cunningham on hold until truce

8.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists. These are Sophie Cunningham’s definitive stats for her first Euroleague appearance. The 25-year-old American winger has, in fact, finished with the flagship competition of continental basketball for this season. Recruited by Basket Landes to replace the tricolor international Valériane Vukosavljevic (about to give birth to her first child), the finalist of the WNBA championship with the Phoenix Mercury did not obtain the medical green light to resume competition on her return. of the United States after the holidays. Still hampered by elbow pain, the native of Columbia, absent against Tarbes on Sunday, will remain away from the field at least until the start of the February international window. Or just after the reception of Sopron, which will mark the end of the Euroleague group stage.