The 2026 EuroLeague Women play-ins started with a bang as the competition’s eight remaining teams opened their best-of-three series.
With spots in April’s playoffs—or “Final Six”—on the line, the first week of play-ins were hard-fought by everyone involved, as clubs like Fenerbahçe Opet and Casademont Zaragoza earned convincing victories while Galatasaray Çağdaş Faktoring squeaked past Basket Landes in an incredible overtime finish.
Here’s our recap of all the play-in action.
Fenerbahçe Opet pulls away from Spar Girona with a brilliant second half
Girona is one of the few
remaining teams that can hang with Fenerbahçe’s high-octane offense, and early on Wednesday it looked like we’d be in for a shootout. Fenerbahçe reached another gear in the second half, however, and ended up pulling away from Girona to win 87-69.
It’s easy to see why Fenerbahçe are widely regarded as the favorites to win this season’s EuroLeague Women championship. When their offense is clicking (and it usually is), they’re virtually unguardable; they racked up 26 assists and shot 56.5 percent from the field in their opening game against Girona, with the frontcourt duo of Emma Meesseman and Iliana Rupert combining to score 36 points on 15-for-22 shooting. It was Fenerbahçe’s defense, however, that powered them to victory on Wednesday, recording a whopping 16 steals that led to 31 fastbreak points.
When Fenerbahçe is playing at such an elite level on both ends of the court, there’s just not much opposing teams can do.
Casademont Zaragoza upsets ZVVZ USK Praha on the road
ZVVZ USK Praha may be the defending EuroLeague Women champions, but it was Casademont Zaragoza who looked like the stronger team on Wednesday.
Zaragoza jumped out to an early lead and kept Praha at arm’s length for the rest of the game, winning 82-71 in wire-to-wire fashion. Neither club shot the ball particularly well from 3-point range, but Zaragoza was remarkably efficient from everywhere else on the court, shooting 66.7 percent on 2-pointers and making 19 free throws to Praha’s eight.
This was, simply put, a statement game from Zaragoza, who are now just one win away from the Final Six. In typical Zaragoza fashion, they didn’t rely too much on any one player, though Carla Leite’s accuracy at the free throw line (10-for-11) certainly stood out. We’ll see if they can show the same kind of composure next week and give their home crowd something big to cheer for.
Beretta Famila Schio comes from behind to defeat Umana Reyer Venezia
This series between two Italian rivals was set up for drama from the beginning, and its first game didn’t disappoint. Venezia and Schio went back-and-forth for the full 40 minutes in a highly competitive game, with Schio ultimately eking out a 68-66 win thanks to a fourth quarter in which they held their hosts to just nine points.
It wasn’t the cleanest basketball game, with Schio and Venezia combining to turn the ball over 33 times, but sometimes that’s just what happens when you have two good teams that are familiar with one another. While Venezia has yet to beat Schio this season in the Italian league, they gave a strong effort in this week’s EuroLeague Women game, leading for just over 26 minutes and doing a decent enough job of holding down Schio’s potent offense. The difference in 3-point shooting, however, was too much for Venezia to overcome: Schio made 9-of-18 3-point shots (50 percent) while Venezia made just 4-of-19 (21.1 percent), and the more efficient team did end up winning at the end of the day.
Galatasaray Çağdaş Faktoring holds off Basket Landes in epic overtime thriller
Did FIBA know something we didn’t when they were scheduling these games and decide to save the best for last?
As exciting as the first three games of the play-ins were, Thursday’s match between Galatasaray and Landes turned out to be an instant classic, with Landes making a massive fourth-quarter comeback before falling to Galatasaray in overtime, 81-72.
If there’s one thing we learned in group play, it’s to never count out Landes when the odds are against them. The French club that was responsible for some of this season’s most thrilling moments nearly completed one of the biggest comebacks in EuroLeague Women history, erasing a 19-point fourth-quarter deficit to force overtime on Galatasaray’s home court.
Galatasaray was able to re-assert themselves in overtime, though. Dorka Juhász, Awak Kuier and Elizabeth Williams all recorded double-doubles, and as a team, Galatasaray held a significant advantage in field goal percentage, shooting 45.6 percent to Landes’ 30.2 percent. They did leave a lot of points at the line, shooting 25-for-39 on free throws and this will obviously need to improve next week when they face a Landes team with its back against the wall.
