12 May 2007
Liga Femenina Final
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
