Inside Volley Board

The Quarter-Final Round match-ups in EuroCup Women were set in stone on Thursday night as the two leg Eighth-Finals were completed.
The Quarter-Final Round will also be played over two legs, with the winner on aggregate advancing to the Semi-Finals.
Two Dynamos advanced with Dynamo Moscow defeating Ibiza Sport Island 70-67 to clinch a 140-130 overall win.
Dynamo Kursk also find themselves a step closer to the EuroCup Women title after an 85-44 win over Seat Gyor, to finish with an overall edge of 70 points.

EuroCup Women Quarter-Final Round (Team listed first opens at home):

K.V. Imperial LIMASSOL vs. Nadezhda ORENBURG
SAARLOUIS Royals vs. USO MONDEVILLE

Sony Athinaikos BYRON vs. Dynamo MOSCOW
Municipal TARGOVISTE vs. Dynamo KURSK

It should come as no surprise that Russians Nadezhda are in the EuroCup
Women Final.
Under the leadership of veteran coach Vladimir Koloskov, who has a
very talented roster of players, the Orenburg club has been flying high
all season both in Russia's top flight and in Europe.
With 10 wins
and four defeats, the Orenburg team finished third in the Superleague
Women Regular Season behind only Spartak Moscow Region and UMMC
Ekaterinburg (both 12-1).
On Wednesday night, Nadezhda claimed a
1-0 lead in their play-off Quarter-Final showdown with Novosibirsk after
a 66-59 home triumph.
Nadezhda, which in English means "hope",
have been hoping for big things since it was founded back in 1994.
It
has gradually become one of the leading sides in the country.
The
club has been in the elite league of Russian women's basketball since
2000
Last season, Nadezhda played in the EuroLeague Women.
The
team won just two of its 10 Qualifying Round games and finished last in
Group A, but looks can be deceiving.
Nadezhda lost their first
two games to Wisla Can-Pack Krakow and Halcon Avenida by a combined
total of four points.
The inexperience in Europe's elite
competition led to more setbacks.
Nadezhda hasn't been perfect in
the EuroCup Women, but they've been very, very good.
They survived
two close shaves on their way to the Final where Sony Athinaikos await
them.
Here is how Nadezhda booked their ticket.

Qualifying Round

Nadezhda finished top of Group I with three wins and just one
setback.
Koloskov's team rolled to a 90-64 triumph over Botas Spor
after getting 26 points from Olga Ovcharenko.
Nadezhda then blew a
big fourth-quarter advantage but held on for a 69-67 victory at Baschet
ICIM in Arad, Romania.
Belarus star Anastasiya Veremeenko had 17
points and 11 rebounds in that victory.
After falling in Turkey to
Botas Spor, 87-80, Nadezhda returned home and thrashed the Baschet ICIM
85-54 to win their group.
Veremeenko excelled again with 18
points and nine rebounds, but the player that caused most of the
headaches for the Romanian club was Sheana Mosch.
ICIM boss Ioanis
Diamantakos made a comment after that contest that should have served
as a warning for the rest of the teams in the competition.
He
said: "Nadezhda is a very good team and it deserved victory. Sheana
Mosch was especially dangerous."
Mosch had 19 points and five
assists. She would go on to lead the club in scoring in the EuroCup and
also make the big plays in their Semi-Final triumph over Saarlouis
Royals.

Sixteenth-Finals

Nadezhda had to
travel to Armenia for the opening leg of their tie with HATIS Yerevan
and got a dominating effort from their 33-year-old center, Oxana
Zakalyuzhnaya.
The veteran had a Dwight Howard-like performance,
scoring 25 points and grabbing 16 rebounds.
Small forward
Ovcharenko also came up big with game, contributing 22 points.
In
the second leg, Nadezhda didn't lower the boom on their opponents until
the second quarter when they outscored YereTheyvan 25-18 to seize a
39-35 lead.
They cruised to an 80-65 triumph to reach the next
stage.
Mosch had a game-high 25 points and there was another
telling contributionmade by the Russia veteran Elena Baranova, who had
17 rebounds to go with her nine points.

Eighth-Finals

The clash between Nadezhda and Spanish outfit Mann Filter Zaragoza
had the makings of the best tie of the Eighth-Finals.
So it proved
to be.
Nadezhda only won the first leg in Orenburg, 80-70, and
had to pull out all stops in Spain to avoid exiting the competition
early.
Four times in the fourth quarter the Spanish side opened up
a four-point lead to pull to within two points of Nadezhda on
aggregate.
On three of Nadezhda's ensuing possessions, Mosch
replied with free-throws to prevent Zaragoza from getting any closer.
On
the fourth, with 19 seconds remaining, Belarus international Veremeenko
sank a pair from the charity stripe to reduce the home side's lead to
77-71.
Zaragoza ended up winning the second leg, 78-72.
Nadezhda,
with Mosch making 14 of 16 free-throws and scoring a game-high 25
points, advanced to the last eight with a 152-148 win on aggregate.

Quarter-Finals

Nadezhda
grabbed the upper hand of their next tie with KV Imperial AEL by
winning the opening leg in Cyprus, 72-64.
Tatiana Burik led a
balanced Russian attack with 20 points.
There were some nervous
moments.
AEL led 45-41 with just under seven minutes to go in the
third quarter.
A Burik three-pointer knotted the contest at 50-50
with 3:19 to go in the frame and Belarus international Katsiaryna
Snytsina, Veremeenko's Belarus international teammate, followed with a
lay-up to put the visitors in front to stay.
AEL refused to roll
over and took the lead in the tie when grabbing a 37-27 advantage late
in the first half of the second leg.
The Cypriot club then took a
three-point lead on aggregate when Chamique Holdsclaw scored late in the
third quarter for a 51-40 advantage.

Monique Currie stopped the bleeding for Nadezhda, scoring four
straight points to give her side a one-point edge over the two legs
heading into the last quarter.
She buried a jumper at the start of
the fourth quarter to keep the pressure on and ended up scoring a
game-high 30 points as the Russian outfit came from behind to win 66-61
and advance to the last four.

Semi-Finals

Saarlouis
Royals gave Nadezhda fits in the opening leg in Germany, but Mosch once
again came to the fore.
With the scored knotted at 52-52 midway
through the fourth quarter, Mosch erupted for seven straight points.
She
made three lay-ups in a row, drawing a foul on the last of them and
turning it into a three-point play.
In the second leg back in
Orenburg, the Russian team rolled to an 81-51 victory with Veremeenko
scoring 14 points, pulling down eight rebounds, dishing out three
assists and swatting two shots.

The men receive the lion's share of the attention in Greece when it
comes to basketball, yet it's beginning to dawn on people that women in
the country play the sport at a high level, too.

At the 2004
Olympics, the Greek women played as the host nation and reached the
Quarter-Finals before falling to the United States, the eventual
gold-medalists.

Even more impressive was last year's run at the EuroBasket in Latvia
when Greece capped a dramatic tournament with a fifth-place finish to
qualify for the FIBA World Championship for Women for the first time.

Now
Sony Athinaikos, which has Greece internationals Dimitra Kalentzou,
Olga Chatzinikolaouliti , Iouliti Limoura, Afroditi Kosma, Polymnia
Saregkou and Nikole Soulis, are making the headlines.

Led by
Greece's national team assistant in Riga, George Dikeoulakos, Athinaikos
have reached the EuroCup Women Final.

They will go up against
Nadezhda Orenburg over two legs, with the first game in Russia on
Thursday.

"We actually feel that all of Greek basketball supports
us," Dikeoulakos said to Basketball World News.

"Greek basketball
has achieved so many things in men's basketball and the only trophy we
are missing is from women's basketball.

"Many people watch our
games live, or through television, and that's also something new in
Greek women's basketball.

"So we are very proud that women's
basketball in Greece has increased so much because of Athinaikos."

Athinaikos
is a club that thinks big, and that is due largely to the people
working in the club and the backing by the Vyronas Mayor Nikos
Hardalias.

"Maybe we are the only team in the world that has four
goals," said Dikeoulakos.

"The Greek championship, the Greek Cup,
the EuroCup and the fourth goal is to stay undefeated in

Greece for the second season in a row, something really very big and
very difficult but there are only two games remaining to keep this
undefeated run."

Playing in the EuroCup Women Final fits perfectly
into the long-term strategy of a club that is trying to build a big
name for itself.

"It's a reward of our effort, hard practices,
spending money and time from the president and the people around the
team," Dikeoulakos said.

"According to the statements of our
president, this team will try to reach many big things.

"There is
no limit in our dreams."

Nadezhda
have a very good team.

This week, they reached the Russian
Superleague Women Play-Off Semi-Finals with a 2-0 sweep of Dynamo
Novosibirsk.

The 54-year-old Nadezhda coach Vladimir Koloskov has
players that could find jobs with many leading European teams.

He
has former Russia national team star Elena Baranova, Belarus
internationals Anastasiya Veremeenko, Tatyana Troina and Katsiaryna
Snytsina, and Russians Oxana Zakalyuzhnaya, Olga Ovcharenko and Tatiana
Burik.

Koloskov's team is led by the exciting American duo of
Sheana Mosch and Monique Curry.

Dikeoulakos, who also served as an assistant to Kostas Missas (the
head coach of the Greek women) on the gold-medal winning Greece team at
the U20 European Championship for Men last year, fully expects a couple
of hard games.

"The fact that they reached the Final means that
they are a very good team," he said.

"They combine their talent
with experience.

"I also respect their coach.

"But we must
never forget that although we're a Greek team with no experience in
Finals, we've gained the respect from all of Europe and every team must
be afraid of us - not Athinaikos afraid of other teams."

In
addition to the Greece internationals, Athinaikos have a pair of
Americans in USA international guard Candice Wiggins and 2004 Olympian
Ruth Riley that ooze with quality.

They may be the two best
players in the side.

Then there are the Lithuanian centers,
Gintare Petronyte and Irene Vizbariene, who play important roles.

So often at the end of games, one
or two plays are highlighted as having been the reasons for wins or
defeats.

At Athinaikos, players are always told that every
possession counts.

"Many small but very important details,"
Dikeoulakos said, when asked what he wanted to stress to his players
heading into the two-legged tie, "but most of all is to convince my
girls to enjoy it. First time in Finals, let's enjoy it because stress
kills!"

Teams with lofty goals can't afford to be distracted.

This
hasn't been a problem for Dikeoulakos.

"The biggest
characteristic in our game, and generally in our team, is that we're
very focused and very serious in every game, no matter if we play
against the last-place team in Greece or in the Euro Final," he said.

"But
the truth is that it's very difficult to have a team playing two games
every week with long and difficult trips until April.

"Greek
players have especially never in the past gone so far and most of them
feel extremely tired, not only in their body but their mind.

"And
maybe that's one reason why in the last games in Greece we played one
level under our ability, in order to be fresher in European games.

"Thank
God that everything is going by the plan."

SONY ATHINAIKOS WIN EUROCUP WOMEN