For the second season in a row, Turkish club Fenerbahçe Alagöz Holding has come out on top in FIBA’s EuroLeague Women competition, defeating French club Villeneuve-d’Ascq LM 106-73 with an elite display of unselfish and efficient basketball.
It’s that brand of dominance that international basketball fans have come to expect from Fenerbahçe, particularly over the past three seasons. There was little doubt that Fenerbahçe, which finished the group play phase of the competition a league-best 12-2, was the favorite to win the title; a gifted group of players led by Napheesa Collier, Kayla McBride and regular-season MVP Emma Meesseman put up offensive statistics that were head and shoulders above those of their rivals, and they saved arguably their finest performance for when it mattered most.
The game stats tell most of the story. Fenerbahçe shot a scorching-hot 59.4 percent from the field (68 percent on 2-pointers), knocked down 26 of its 29 free throw attempts and moved the ball with ease and precision, recording an incredible 40 assists as a team.
What the numbers don’t explain, however, is just how easy and natural Fenerbahçe made it all look. EuroLeague Women is typically regarded as the strongest competition of its kind, but with a dynamic qualification process and club budgets often in flux (as well as complicated logistics that involve each club playing both in EuroLeague Women and its respective domestic league), it’s understandable if even the most talented rosters have trouble establishing chemistry throughout the course of a season.
That wasn’t the case for Fenerbahçe. When at full strength, the club’s players looked as if they had competed alongside one another for decades. Players like Collier, Meesseman, McBride (who was named EuroLeague Women Final Four MVP) and Yvonne Anderson (who earned Defensive Player of the Year honors) are among the best at their respective positions, but the way they elevated each others’ play was the difference between Fenerbahçe being an elite team and merely a good one.
As McBride put it after the game: Fenerbahçe’s players had become family, and it showed on the court.
That’s not to take anything away from Villeneuve-d’Ascq. Led by Kennedy Burke, Shavonte Zellous and Kamiah Smalls, it became the first French club to reach the EuroLeague Women Final Four since Bourges in 2014, and the first to make it all the way to the title game since the now-defunct Valenciennes Olympic back in 2004. Villeneuve-d’Ascq’s improbable run, which included a victory over the favored ZVVZ USK Praha in the Final Four, will surely put the club on the map as one of the better destinations for international talent — if it isn’t already — and will drum up some well-deserved excitement heading into next season.
Until then, though, rival clubs can only look at what this season’s EuroLeague Women champions have built and try to figure out how they can match it. The Fenerbahçe dynasty has officially begun.