The 1997 Euroleague Women was the inaugural edition of the competition, a refoundation of the FIBA Women's European Champions Cup,

FIBA Europe FIBA Europe is the administrative body for basketball in Europe, within the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), which includes all 50 national European basketball federations. In reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIBA Euro ...

's premier competition for women's

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

clubs. Running from 2 October 1996 to 10 April 1997, the competition was turned from a European Cup for all national champion clubs to a 16-team semi-closed championship, with champions from lower-seeded national leagues playing instead the second tier

Ronchetti Cup The Ronchetti Cup (called till 1996 ''European Cup Liliana Ronchetti'') was an annual women’s basketball European club competition held by FIBA between the years 1972 and 2002. It was the second competition in European basketball, after the Euro ...

; in addition to thirteen national champions the

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and Italian runners-up were also granted a spot. Other than suppressing the two qualifying rounds, the competition system was the same as that of the 1996 European Cup. Bourges Basket defeated defending champion BTV Wuppertal to become the first French team to win the competition since the European Cup's foundation in 1959. The Final Four, which took place in

Larissa Larissa (; el, Λάρισα, , ) is the capital and largest city of the Thessaly region in Greece. It is the fifth-most populous city in Greece with a population of 144,651 according to the 2011 census. It is also capital of the Larissa regiona ...

, was contested by the same four teams as the previous edition's, with Ružomberok beating

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for the bronze.Results
in FIBA Europe's website

Preliminary round

Group A

Group B

Quarter-finals

Final four

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1996-97 EuroLeague Women EuroLeague Women seasons