Our Beşiktaş Cola Turka Women’s Basketball Team joined the top 16 teams of FIBA European Cup after successfully defeating the visiting Gran Canaria 69-51 in the replay played at the BJK Akatlar Sports and Culture Complex.

Starting the game with Lovelace, Braxton, Esmeral Tunçluer, Sariye Gökçe and Tuğba Palazoğlu first five line up, our ladies made an extraordinarily fast entry into the game. Attacking with consecutive points of Kara Braxton, Black&Whites opened up a scoring deficit in their favor starting from the early minutes. While entering the 5th minute with 9 points, they gave away only 2 points to the visiting Spanish representatives (11-2). Despite of finding points in the final 2 points, Gran Canaria could not display any effective offensive performance in their scoring attempts. Therefore, in order to avoid an increase in the score difference in favor of Beşiktaş, they turned to an aggressive defensive tactic. However, their efforts did not produce the desired result and yellow&darkblues trailed 19-10 at the end of the period.
Needing a substantial point difference for eliminating its opponent, Beşiktaş Cola Turka tried to stage a superior play in the second period as well. While stopping the Spanish effectively under the rim, Black&Whites attempted to establish the required deficit with outside shots behind the arch. Unable to sustain this high level tempo from time to time, our ladies started to make defensive errors and Gran Canaria reduced the gap to 3 points in the 14th minute of the game (25-22). In fact, the yellow&darkblues snatched the control of the game in the early minutes of the second period and took the lead with a 17th minute basket for the first time (26-25). Nevertheless, thanks to Lovelace and Braxton duo’s brilliant performance, our side got eventually organized and gained back the superiority of the game. Our ladies increased their advantage to 10 points in final 30 seconds and went to locker room leading with a score 39-29 at the end of the first half.
In order to find more points, both teams started the second half with an attacking tactic. Our Black&Whites were quite successful in sustaining their lead in the third period for along time. However, because of simple defensive errors they could not increase the point difference in their favor and visiting Spanish representative lowered the deficit to 6 points in the 26th minute (44-38). While leading with 6 points in the game, a 3 pointer by Lovelace brought Beşiktaş’s advantage to 9 points. Last second successful foul throws of Tuğba Palazoğlu gave a 53-42 superiority to Beşiktaş Cola Turka at the end of the third period.
Starting the final and crucial period with extra baskets, Our Black&Whites came close to attaining the second tour advantage for the first time in the game thanks to the free throws of Yasemin Horasan. Suddenly increasing the score difference to 15 points earlier (57-42), our Ladies finally had a chance to relax by the back to back 3 pointers of Esmeral Tunçluer. However at the 36th minute, the score was not sufficient enough for Beşiktaş’s second tour hopes. The 37th minute successful foul throws of Esmeral opened up the gap to required 18 points between to two teams. From that moment on, Our Black&Whites displayed a more controlled performance. Despite of facing difficulties under the rim Our Ladies gradually gained the upper hand in rebounds. Trying to retain its tour advantage, Gran Canaria was forced to outside shots and displayed all its cards. The outside shots of Spanish were effective and they started to reduce the deficit. Entering in to the final minute they were trailing with a score of 68-51. 
The last seconds of the game were virtually a thriller. After a missed scoring attempt of Gran Canaria Black&Whites got the ball but Kara Braxton was stopped with a foul. Our American player made one of her two foul shots 2.7 seconds left in the game and our team reached to 18 points difference required for the second tour. Since the visiting team could not respond, Black&Whites won this critical game ( 69-51) and joined the top 16 teams of European Cup. 
While Stacey Lovelace was the star of the game with 18 points, Esmeral Tunçluer (17), Kara Braxton (16), Tuğba Palazoğlu (12), Sariye Gökçe (4) and Yasemin Horasan (2) were the other scorers.