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EuroLeague Women is back… sort of.
EuroLeague Women qualifiers are the entrée to the main dish, which is the 2025-26 group competition. In other words, teams participating in two-leg qualifying games are fighting for the remaining five spots in the cool kids club.
How cool is that club? Last year, on social media, the EuroLeague continued its digital growth when it comes to the number of followers but, more importantly, fan engagement. People watch, comment and share. And since sharing is caring, it means they actually care about women’s basketball.
This season, due to the rise of Unrivaled, Europe will probably miss out on some of the best American players, but this opens up the door for other players to get that opportunity and shine. And the first five qualifying games already proved that there’s so much talent to watch and enjoy, creating more excitement for the coming EuroLeague season.
Here are two takeaways from those five games:
Bigs make the world go round
Žabiny Brno overpowered Zaragoza by 20 points and one of the key contributors was the No. 2 overall pick of the 2015 WNBA Draft, Amanda Zahui B. The 6-foot-5 Swedish power forward missed out on the last two WNBA seasons, but she’s been doing her thing in Europe.
Currently in Czechia, she scored 16 points and grabbed six rebounds, coming off the bench. Her play was great, but her enthusiasm was contagious.
And then was the dominant performance by Galatasaray, who rely on the twin towers of Dorka Juhász and Awak Kuier.
In the first game against Sepsi, a blowout win, the two proved reliable, as both had double-doubles: Juhász had 15 points and 10 boards and Kuier had 12 and 10. Kuier also added four blocks, which proves that they will be a problem for other teams.
Another notable performance from a big came from Kariata Diaby. Before being cut on July 2, Diaby played 13 games in the WNBA for the Connecticut Sun, debuting in the league at age 30. Now back in Europe in a familiar surrounding, the reigning French League MVP had 16 points in Bourges’ losing effort to the best team in Lithuania from the last five years, Kibirkštis. Which brings us to the second takeaway…
The performance of the night for Kibirkštis came from Kamilė Nacickaitė-Van Der Horst, a 35-year-old Drexel graduate, whose last team was… Tango Bourges. She delivered against her former team, scoring 25 points on the road to a nine-point victory.
Her first half performance was particularly dominant as she made all five of her 3-point attempts. And those were some hard shots to make!
Another great performance came from Destiny Slocum, who we’ve interviewed two years ago when she played in Hungary. Now in Poland after playing in France last year, she came up big for Lublin, scoring game-high 17 points on 70 percent accuracy, leading her team to a narrow win over DVTK.
Crvena Zvezda’s Yvonne Anderson had an even bigger game, scoring 20 points, grabbing eight boards and dishing out six dimes, but Venezia was too good that day and despite Anderson’s best efforts, Zvezda lost by eight points, which they can still make up for in the rematch.
The teams that finish their qualifying matchups with the better point differential will advance to the main competition. The second games of the set will be played on Wednesday, Sept. 24. Below are the scores from the first leg of games:
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