SLUC Nancy Basket 2008-09 team profile
|
 Over the past four years, no team has accomplished as much in French basketball as SLUC Nancy Basket, whose crowning achievement was to win its first-ever French League championship this past season. Now, this growing power will step up for a new challenge, partaking in the Euroleague for the first time. Such opportunity was a long time coming to Nancy. Founded in 1967, Stade Lorraine Universite Club Nancy Basket did not find its first real success until the early 1990s, when the team advanced to the French third division and soon after to the second before in 1995 finishing an amazing run that started at the bottom of the French basketball ladder by making it to the first division. Nancy soon started to fight for titles, reaching the 1997 French Cup final, although it would lose against Asvel. That year, the team lost to Tau Ceramica in the early rounds of the Korac Cup, its first-ever appearance in European competition. The team kept battling to reach the French League playoffs, finishing sixth in the 2000-01 season. It was only a question of time before Nancy would win a title, and that finally happened in 2002. Big man Cyril Julian, who first joined the club in its debut season in the first division, was joined by Stevin Smith, Vincent Masingue and Joseph Gomis as Nancy downed Bayer Leverkusen, Dijon and Pivovarna Lasko to make it to the 2002 Korac Cup finals against Lokomotiv Rostov. Smith had 23 points in the first leg, which Nancy won 98-72, while Masingue helped hold off a Rostov rally in the second leg to bring the club its first title.
2007-08 RESULTS | ULEB Cup | | French League | R. Season | 21-9 | Playoffs | Champion |
|
|
Nancy's next piece of silverware came in 2005 when it won the Semaine Des As title, thrashing Gravelines 76-112 in the final. Starting that year, the club started appearing in each and every French playoff final. Nancy came up short the first three years, losing to Strasbourg, Le Mans and Choral Roanne, respectively. In 2006-07, Nancy also made its ULEB Cup debut and reached the elimination rounds, only to lose against Strasbourg in an exciting eighthfinals matchup. Last season, the club returned to the ULEB Cup and narrowly missed gaining a spot in the elimination rounds. However, Nancy rebounded from that disappointment to finish the season on a high note as Jeff Greer led the club to an 84-53 rout of defending champion Roanne in the French League final. That historic victory has catapulted the club into the Euroleague, where Nancy will continue on the road of professionalism as it looks to make a mark on the continent's top competition in its debut season.
|
|
Euroleague.net
|