BRNO (FIBA World Championship for Women) – The first significant change has been made to the wider nomination for the Czech women’s basketball team. The seventeen member team, which has been preparing for the forthcoming FIBA World Championship for Women since mid-May, has been narrowed down by two players following the game against Belarus. The announcement was made by head coach Lubor Blazek at a press conference in Brno on Friday afternoon.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘cut’, nevertheless that fact of the matter is that we can only use twelve players at the World Championship, therefore the team must be narrowed down. So in the end there was no room on the short list for Michaela Zrustova and Katerina Zohnova,” said Blazek.

The decision certainly was not easy.

“For example, Mísa Zrustova improved tremendously during the preparation and in the end it was the fact that she played the majority of last year’s season as a small pivot, whereas on the national team we tested her as a winger, that decided about her getting cut. But I believe that if she continues to work on herself and if she plays as a winger in the league, then she has a big future on the national team ahead of her.”

As far as Katerina Zohnova is concerned, the second player whose World Championship adventure ended on Friday, the decisive factors according to coach Blazek were her physical size – or lack thereof – and the fact that the team has too many wingers.

“As both games against Belarus showed, matches at the world championship will be mainly about power and aggression. From this perspective we want to have more robust types of players available.

“But by all means I also want to thank Kacka for her approach during the entire preparation. She was one of the team’s souls and it was also a very difficult decision in this case,” he concluded.

The Czech coaching triumvirate of Blazek-Benes-Petrovicky now has 15 players available, plus Jana Vesela, who is currently still playing overseas. The next cuts will take place in less than fourteen days after the first preparation match against Greece in Brno, on 8th September 2010).

The final nomination of twelve players for the World Championship will then be announced by coach Blazek after the last official preparation match against China on 17th September in Prague.

FIBA/LOC