Thursday, May 23, 2024, 11:38 | Updated 4:03 p.m.
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Belgium is one of the countries with the most emerging talent in women’s basketball in recent years. It is the current European champion and a quality fishing ground that does not go unnoticed by the best teams on the continent. Nor for IDK Euskotren, which has reached an agreement with the 1.84-meter-tall, 19-year-old Belgian power forward Nastja Claessens, who will be a new member of the squad this coming season.
Added to this is the renewal announced on Wednesday of Becky Massey, an international with the Central European country and whose good campaign has earned her the chance to spend her second year in Donostia. Claessens, who will turn twenty in December, is one of the most promising players in her country. She has been international in all the youth categories, debuting in 2023 with the senior team and is drafted by the Washington Mystics of the WNBA.
The new IDK Euskotren player comes from playing for Minthra Castors Braine, another of the leading clubs in the Belgian first division. In the league she obtained 14.5 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2 assists and 1.3 steals per game, with a 60% success rate on three-pointers. In the Eurocup, a competition in which she played, she scored 13 points, 2.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 steals per game with 52.6% effectiveness in three-point shots.
Excellent numbers that will now require a step more, since the level of the Endesa Women’s League is higher than that of the Belgian domestic league. Claessens already knows what it means to play the Eurocup, so it won’t be strange for her to have three games a week like the Ibaeta squad will have.
Her professional career began in the 2020/21 season at Declerq-Storbeton Waregen in the Belgian women’s first division with an average of 12 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists and 5 steals per game. In the 2021/22 and 2022/23 seasons she played for Koninklijk Basket Team, another award-winning team in the Belgian women’s first division, where she actively contributed to third place in the league and being a cup semi-finalist in the 2022/23 season. She averaged 16.5 points 7 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 2 steals per game.
With Claessens there are now five members of the new and ambitious IDK Euskotren project for next season, which will be the second where it combines the Endesa Women’s League with the Eurocup. The guards Lara González and Alba Prieto, the guard Rosó Buch and the Belgian interiors Becky Massey and Nastja Claessens are the first five members of the team coached by Azu Muguruza.
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2024-05-23 14:03:52
#Belgian #talent #IDK #Euskotren
