BRA – Brazil gets ready

RIO DE JANEIRO (FIBA Americas Championship for Women) – Team Brazil keeps getting ready for the FIBA Americas Championship, to be held from September 26 to 30, in Chile, and now, they received some extra-help in the figure of forward Iziane Castro, who arrived in Sao Paolo and immediately joined the team.

The player’s coming from a great individual season, whereas her team, the Seattle Storm didn’t have the same luck. Iziane finished with 419 points, 95 assists, and 35 rebounds on 34 games. “It was a great season for me, although not so for the team” the player said, “we didn’t show all the talent that we have.”

The forward doesn’t try to hide her feelings about starting to train with the national team, “I’m very excited, looking forward to be with the rest of the team”, Castro said. “This is a different group, with a new coach and the desire to do a great job in the Pre-Olympic”.

In Chile, Team USA will be Brazil's main rival. Iziane feels confident, “logically, is hard to win against the Americans, but we’re going to train with determination in order to achieve our main goal, which is the Olympic qualification” she said. “Anything can happen during a game. We have talented, determined players and we’ll work hard to achieve that win”.

Meanwhile, the team has been training for four weeks, and currently gets ready for two exhibition games within the next few days against male teams. “We had a good week of training and now we are stronger. We’ll make the most out of the next two games against men teams, which is great for us. It’s important for us that each game is as hard as it can be, in order to be ready for the Pre-Olympic”, Micaela said.