Queens of Yekaterinburg

Alba Torrens picked up the player-of-the-match trophy after the Euroleague final looking exhausted and with that scruffy air that tends to surround geniuses. Her smile was the only thing that bore witness to her heroics. "It is the greatest thing I have ever experienced, but I didn't stop suffering until the final minute," said the 21-year-old. The Spanish international from Binissalem (Mallorca) scored 13 points in the game that saw her team Perfumerías Avenida take the Euroleague title for the first time.

The Salamanca-based team defeated the mighty Spartak Moscow Region- winner of the last four competitions- 59-68; it marked the first time a Spanish women's basketball side had lifted the trophy since Dorna Godella beat Como in 1993.

Two years ago, Perfumerías Avenida played Spartak in the final of the same competition and handed over the title, "conscious that we were very inferior," Torrens said. On Sunday, in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, the determination and talent of coach Lucas Mondelo's players brought Spartak's dominance- bought by its importing of experienced WNBA names into its roster- to an end. "We wanted to eliminate the Russian's area of creation and we managed it, suffocating [Sue] Bird at the base and forcing her fouls," said Mondelo. "There are times when the plan comes together and today it came together pretty well."

Led by Torrens, Silvia Domínguez and Sancho Lyttle, the team dominated the match from beginning to end. Frenetic pace and exhausting defense changed the script for a Spartak side that didn't even wake up after Taj McWilliams' flurry of points in the last five minutes. It was too little, too late.

"This is a dream come true," said Mondelo. "It is the maximum we could have reached and we have done it after playing a great Euroleague and shining in the final."

Spanish women's basketball has now demonstrated at club level the strength it showed when the national side won bronze in the World Championships in the Czech Republic last summer. The future promises to be enthralling.