Hoops Nena -- the blog

5/23/2007 – Ciudad Ros Casares and Carme Lluveras, club general manager, have arrived at an agreement to extend her deal one more season, that is, until the end of the 2007-2008 season.

Carme Lluveras stated, “Valencia is the ideal place for me to develop my ambition. It’s an honor for me to continue working in a club like Ciudad Ros Casares, where I feel at home.”

The GM arrived at Ciudad Ros Casares at the end of January 2006 with a view toward planning the 2006-2007 season, a campaign that has turned out to be the club’s most successful ever. The team has come to dominate in the Liga Valenciana, winning the Supercopa, the Copa de la Reina and the Liga Femenina, even getting to the final in the Euroliga Femenina.

“After an almost perfect year, it will be difficult to match those successes, but this motivates me even more. The hard part is staying up among the European elite,” said Lluveras. She explained all this on Friday when the club announced it would re-sign head coach Manolo Real. Lluveras expects the Ros Casares project to continue showing success, saying “The main objective is to extend our hegemony in Spain and return to the Final Four of the Euroliga Femenina.”

The Ciudad Ros Casares GM has new challenges now. “Before I only had to get the team to win,” she said. “Now the responsibility is even greater. The whole club has to win! And I enjoy that. The idea that I brought to the club was not just to promote quality player personnel but to help improve and grow the whole organization. In this part are several objectives, which also strike me as crucial. We’re going to build new offices in the Fonteta. We also want to improve the uniforms and innovate more in our merchandising. This series of initiatives will help us to grow even more,” said Lluveras.

Eight of the players who played for Ciudad Ros Casares this season are contracted through the 2007-2008 season. These are Elisa Aguilar, Laia Palau, Noemi Jornada, Elena Tornikidou, DeLisha Milton-Jones, Marina Ferragut, Erika de Souza and Margot Dydek.

Source document: Carme Lluveras: “Valencia es el sitio ideal para desarrollar mi ambición”

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5/11/2007 – Ciudad Ros Casares Valencia and Elena Tornikidou have arrived at an agreement to renew her contract for one more season. Thus the club will secure her services at the wing through the end of the 2007-08 season.

Tornikidou didn’t hide her happiness in the agreement: “I have decided to stay one more year and I am very happy to be with a club like Ros Casares. I feel good and I believe that I can continue to bring value to this ambitious project. I’m happy in Valencia.”

Carme Lluveras, general manager of Ros Casares, congratulated herself on re-signing the wing. “To have convinced a player like Elena Tornikidou to continue to stick with our project is a very ambitious step because that assures us the participation of one of the most fascinating players of the last few years. Elena will keep doing plenty for us, above all showing us one of the most competitive personalities on the court today.”

Born May 27 1965, Elena Tornikidou came to Ros Casares last summer from Perfumerías Avenida. During the 2006-2007 season she played in 58 official games with the Valenciennes: 26 in the Liga Regular, 17 in Euroliga, 10 in the playoffs for the Liga Femenina title, 3 in the Copa Reina, 1 in the Supercopa and 1 in the Liga Valencia.

Source document: Ciudad Ros Casares renueva a Elena Tornikidou un año más

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Ciudad Ros Casares takes the title in the series final, 85-78

5/7/2007 – The grand spectacle of women’s basketball has wrapped up with the triumph of Ros Casares, which used all their resources to crush the fight out of a great Perfumerías Avenida team. Up to the last minute of this fifth matchup of the Liga Femenina Final, the most dedicated fans were rewarded with a battle royal overflowing with emotion. The Valenciennes came back to raise the league title trophy in a season in which they also won the Copa Reina, the SuperCopa and the subchampionship of the Euroliga.

The game began by ending the doubts of the last few days. The first, that the fervor for women’s basketball lives on: the grand entrance into the Fonteta, with fans of both sides representing and communication shattered between them. The second doubt, Delisha Milton, doubtful from a poke in the eye in the fourth contest, was in the starting five – in fact, she scored her team’s first four points. The third was a technical problem which delayed the start of the game.
With that, players on both sides traed to recover the late start with some fast-paced opening play. Silvia Domínguez made herself a hero by scoring her team’s first six points and defending like crazy. The scoreboard was burning up and the thought of a 62-point win fell by the wayside. At the end of the first quarter, the visitors led by six at 22-16.
The lead grew in the second quarter. The Salmantinas’ foreign triplets, Powell, Williams and Jansone, got no looks for several minutes of a series and their silence made the score 36-24 at the four-minute mark. If Avenida had shown in the series that they were capable of mounting a comeback, their chance would have come to force the Valenciennes to see if they could overcome such a crisis, since after all Avenida had never been down by much.
Oddly it was the players with the fewest minutes who put the cap on the scoreboard. On one side was Noemí Jordana, who got clobbered in the first game of the series but returned in the final to play perhaps her finest minutes, unstoppable from three-point range and deadly on defense. The other name was that of Margo Dydek. The Pole had not been top scorer in any of the five title series games but her entrance onto the floor always changed the rhythm of the game.
On this occasion she studied, intimidated and created problems with the Salmantina offense. One basket from her capped a 10-point lead with four minutes to go. A three from Powell kept the game from getting out of hand, and a 5-0 run by Avenida put the score at 73-68, still anybody’s game. Head coach Manolo Real called time out and expressed his disgust with the situation. Two baskets from Laia Palau, who had seized responsibility, and a free throw from Tornikidou pushed the Ros lead back to 10 at 78-68. But Avenida had shown they weren’t a team to just put their hands down. Great defense, a trey from Silvia and a flurry of errors by Ros allowed Avenida to narrow the gap once more to only five points. An encounter between Delisha Milton and Ana Montañana led to a technical against Milton. Avenida’s last effort resulted in their being a worthy championship runner-up. Ros Casares returned to seize the league title in an historic season.
CIUDAD ROS CASARES 85: Aguilar (15), Palau (20), Tournikidou (11), Milton-Jones (14), de Souza (10) – starting five – Feaster (-), Jordana (6), Ferragut (-), Dydek (9)
PERFUMERÍAS AVENIDA 78: Bermejo (5), Domínguez (13), Powell (24), Montañana (6), Williams (18) – starting five – Camps (-), Jansone (11), Nnindjen (1).
Notes: 5,000 fans in the Pabellón Fuente de San Luis, 900 from Salamanca. A moment of silence was observed for the death of José Doménech, ex-president of Ros Casares, and Amparo García, founder of Ros Casares and mother of the current president. FEB president José Luis Sáez took the podium and awarded the cup to Elisa Aguilar.
Source document: Liga Femenina Final

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