Spartak Moscow Region cruised to a third straight win in the EuroLeague Women at the expense of French league leaders Tarbes G.B.

The Russian outfit, winners of the EuroLeague for the past three seasons, held Tarbes to just 12 points for the first 16 minutes of the game and rolled to an 81-56 Group D victory in Vidnoje.

Sylvia Fowles finished with 17 points to lead Spartak.

The Russian outfit, which is now coached by Pokey Chatman, opened up a 27-6 lead by the end of the first quarter and extended that to 54-19 late in the first half.

The rest of the game was an exercise in damage limitation for Tarbes, who got 16 points and seven rebounds from Charde Houston.

Tarbes' Pauline Jannault shook off an ankle injury suffered in practice and played more than 23 minutes, finishing with two points, two assists and four rebounds.

Tarber head coach Francois Gomez:
"The first half was Christmas for my girls because they were allowed to play against Diana Taurasi and Sylvia Fowles. In the second half we came back to reality and played as good as we could. I hope we will keep playing like that to challenge for the 4th spot in this group."

Tarbes player Anne Breitreiner:
"At the beginning we were shocked by how good they are. But still, even if you lose like we did today you can still learn so much from playing against those great players."

Spartak head coach Pokey Chatman:
"We set the tone at the beginning with strong defense. Later we were able to give all theplayers the opportunity to play.

"Tarbes played a good second half and really challenged us there.

"It feels good to be back home."

Spartak player Janel McCarville:
"In the first half we played very good. We relaxed a little bit and that gave Tarbes the possibility to come back. But we stepped it up again and finished the game strong."