| Samara basketball players became national champions for the first time Russian women's basketball has a new national champion. For the first time, this title was won by girls from the Samara club VBM-SSAU. In the super final series, they defeated three times another team with the name UMMC “encrypted” in the form of another unpronounceable abbreviation - 88:76, 67:65 in Yekaterinburg and 67:66 on the banks of the Volga.
Alas, the leaders of the two richest clubs in the country, which include many titled foreign legionnaires and Russian national team players, are not yet going to cancel these cuts, mysterious for many fans. The rules of the game do not allow the women's groups to be called more affectionately and understandably - whoever pays calls the tune. In the meantime, for sports fans who are not too deeply immersed in women's basketball, we have to explain that VBM-SSAU defends the colors of the Volgaburmash enterprise and Samara State Aerospace University, and UMMC is the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company.
Quite logical expectations that the final confrontation between two teams of approximately equal class in a series of up to three wins would stretch over five matches, as in hockey or men's volleyball, did not materialize. VBM-SSAU, the base club of the national team, dealt a painful blow to the champion of the last two years and the winner of the Euroleague last season, not allowing the “Ural girls” to win at least one match in their home walls. True, the fights turned out to be very stubborn and spectacular; in the second and third meetings, the intrigue lasted until the last second of the final period. In the first match, foreign primas took the lead - Congolese Mwadi Mabika from the winning team and her opponent, American Yolanda Griffith, scored 30 points each. In the next game, another US representative, Mary Ferdinand, made the decisive shot two minutes before the siren, after which the hosts attacked the Volzhanka ring several times in vain. And finally, in the third match, UMMC showed a remarkable will to win. The lead of the Samara club at times reached 17 points, and the celebration of the championship had already begun in the crowded stands. Nevertheless, Serbian coach Zoran Visic's team organized a successful chase and almost caught up with their rivals. Once again, everything was decided in the last moments; the center of the national team, Maria Stepanova, showed herself superbly, sending much-needed balls into the Ural girls’ hoop.
For the first time, the women's super final attracted such an impressive audience. Previously, matches for Russian “gold” were often held in small halls - on the actual training ground of the Moscow Dynamo or on the parquet floor of the Samara sports complex CSK VVS. The maximum number of fans could visit the stands of the Uralmash winter arena, but this was at most one and a half thousand spectators. This season, candidates for the highest awards have beautiful sports palaces at their disposal. In Yekaterinburg, tickets were immediately snapped up from the box office, and a total of 10 thousand fans attended two games; on the banks of the Volga, the MTL Arena with an official capacity of 3 thousand people was literally bursting with an influx of people wishing to witness the happy moment of the championship.
VBM-SSAU, having gathered under its banners six current European champions, several African-American women and the Czech star Camilla Vodichkova, won four prestigious tournaments this season - the World Cup, the Russian Cup, the regular super league championship and the national championship. However, in the most significant competition from a sporting point of view, the Volzhanki failed - they did not make it to the Euroleague playoffs, finishing sixth out of eight in their preliminary stage group. That is why the return to Russia of team coach Igor Grudin, who worked in France for eight years, can hardly be called triumphant.
UMMC spent huge amounts of money on contracts with foreign players and in the end did not win one title. A year ago, Visic’s praises were sung, but the level of player injuries is also an indicator of the coach’s qualifications. UMMC reached the finish line of the championship without a number of leading basketball players who had health problems, which largely predetermined the outcome of the gold medal series. Inviting the best player in the 2003 WNBA, Lauren Jackson, only to the final matches did not have the desired effect. She scored only 23 points in three meetings. According to the Australian herself, made on the Green Continent even before leaving for Yekaterinburg, the amount of her short-term contract was 220 thousand dollars. The figure is fantastic by our standards. If you calculate how much it cost for one minute of Jackson’s stay on the court during playing time, you get a little more than 4 thousand dollars. For comparison, the annual budget of one of the best basketball sports schools in the country, where more than 1,700 young Muscovites learn sportsmanship under the guidance of two dozen coaches , is equal to 10 million 700 thousand rubles, i.e. approximately 370 thousand dollars. Ilya TRISVIATSKY |
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