Agu Spor out for EuroCup Women glory
KAYSERI (EuroCup Women 2017) – Having started recent campaigns as a EuroLeague Women team, Agu Spor find themselves returning to the EuroCup Women Regular Season next month and are being touted as serious contenders for silverware.
The locals in Kayseri will certainly be eager to see their favourites try and make it third time lucky and bury the disappointment of losing back-to-back EuroCup Women Finals in 2012 and 2013, when some seriously huge home crowds in excess of 10,000 tried to roar their team to an historic success.
Having only just came up short, the club moved on to EuroLeague Women and have posted three solid seasons. Indeed the roster that Agu Spor have assembled for 2016-17 looks as good, perhaps even better than the ones they have put out in the past.
This makes them a frontrunner for the title and in terms of their frontcourt in particular, it is arguably the finest in EuroCup Women 2017.
Retaining Turkey national team powerhouse and Rio Olympian Lara Sanders, as well as the underrated Croatian national team player Mirna Mazic, Agu Spor have also brought in EuroLeague Women legend Ann Wauters and Montenegrin leader Jelena Dubljevic.
Both players competed with Galatasaray last season and they will be joined by guard Aysegul Gunay, who makes a return to the city having been part of the Kayseri team which sealed an historic first appearance at the EuroLeague Women Final Eight.
The club is also going back to the future by bringing in Tanisha Wright, whose all-action style on the wing left many supporters excited between 2013 to 2015. The New York Liberty player could form a devastating partnership with the free-scoring Chelsea Gray, who has been handed another season after lighting it up last year.
The only concern for Agu Spor is that the past nine months or so have seen them on a major slide - although it looks as if they are now addressing the situation by bringing in vast experience. Last December, they were top of the Turkish League and going well in EuroLeague Women. But, the wheels came crashing off in spectacular style, during what proved to be a truly miserable first half of 2016.
While they did make the cut for EuroCup Women via their EuroLeague Women group position, they fell to eventual champions Tango Bourges Basket in the Semi-Finals.
This time around, they will be in EuroCup Women from the start and surely eager to show they have the stamina and class to be the last team standing and cement their first title.
FIBA
