Spartak Moscow Region star Diana Taurasi firmly believes the Superleague Women in Russia is the best domestic competition in Europe.

"Without a doubt," the Team USA star said to Soviet Sport.

"There are the best players in the Russian Championship."

One look at her team and the side it is trying to beat in Thursday's deciding fifth game, CSKA Volgaburmash, and it's hard to argue with her.

Spartak features fellow Team USA stars Tina Thompson and Sue Bird, and the Australia international Lauren Jackson.

The team also has terrific Russian internationals like Svetlana Abrosimova and Marina Karpunina.

Holding their own for CSKA are Russian internationals Maria Stepanova, Olga Arteshina and Ilona Korstin plus Belgian center Ann Wauters, Spanish star Amaya Valdemoro and French point guard Edwige Lawson.

Taurasi and Spartak beat CSKA Volgaburmash in the semi-finals of the EuroLeague Women last month before pipping Ros Casares to the title.

Now, Spartak and CSKA are engaged in a thrilling best-of-five series to decide the Superleague title.

The Game Five decider will be played on Thursday.

In the fourth game, Spartak won 69-60 but CSKA did make it a very close game.

"We didn't win very easily against CSKA in the fourth game," Taurasi said.

"The opponents reduced the deficit to three points in the third quarter but a long range shot by Karpunina gave us back our confidence."

CSKA were left smarting after that defeat.

Igor Grudin's assistant coach, Dmitri Donskov, told the official website of the club: "Three Spartak players - Thompson, Taurasi and Jackson collected 50 of their 69 total points, it's clear that we couldn't stop them."

"But the main reason of our defeat was due to our own misses, especially from long range (CSKA were 4-22 from long range) - and our 22 turnovers."