By Le Figaro
Published 27 minutes ago, Updated 1 minute ago
The double for Napheesa Collier and company, winners of Villeneuve d’Ascq and Janelle Salaun. OZAN KOSE / AFP
Title holders, Valérie Garnier’s players largely disposed of the French Villeneuve d’Ascq this Sunday, in the Euroleague final, in Mersin (Turkey).
The Villeneuve d’Ascq basketball players fell in the Euroleague final (106-73), overwhelmed by the defending champions Fenerbahçe on Sunday in Mersin, on the Turkish coast. The first French team to reach the final of the queen of European competitions for twenty years, the Northerners only resisted the Istanbul club for half time, led by the former coach of the France team Valérie Garnier. The step was too high for the “Guerrières” against the “Fener”, author of a double after his first coronation last year.
In the absence of a French club, a French technician is titled with Valérie Garnier, almost three years after the end of my mandate at the head of the Bleues concluded with a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics. The story is also unusual for Marième Badiane: the interior of Les Bleues, who hastily left Lattes-Montpellier in February, only wore the Navy and Yellow colors of the Turkish giant for the fifth time during its European coronation.
Fenerbahçe hung on… for a quarter of an hour
After their sensational coup against Prague on Friday in the semi-final (84-78), the reservoir of achievement was too siphoned off to close the gap with the Turkish armada. Rachid Meziane’s players held off the European champions for a quarter of an hour (40-40, 16th). For a time, his American “backcourt”, between 37-year-old veteran Shavonte Zellous (17 pts) and Kamiah Smalls (12 pts), extended the coach’s “standing dream”. Finally dissipated or rather scuttled by the lost balls (20) and pounded at mid-distance by the incredible Belgian inside Emma Meesseman (22 pts) or the American winger Napheesa Collier (33 pts).
The regular season leaders of the French championship returned to the locker room with an almost crippling gap (58-45 MT) and boos from a Servet-Tazegül room (7,500 seats) all won over by the Turkish club. The enchanted parenthesis of the Villeneuvois Cinderella, who set foot on his first floor in a Final Four, did not experience the same outcome as his neighbor Valenciennes, crowned in 2004, when French clubs counted in Europe.
