A newly promoted team visits Los Guindos

This Saturday, October 24, at 5:30 p.m., there’s a new game at the Martín Urbano court in Los Guindos. Buy your ticket for 5 euros HERE or at the box office on game day. This time, Unicaja Mijas faces off against the competitive Mipelletymas B.F. León. The newly promoted team is proving early in the season that its core roster is ready to compete.

 

In addition to head coach Rafael González, up to six players remain on the team after securing promotion to the LF Challenge: Faoutmata Dembelé, Mar Ferreras, Lucía Rodríguez, Paula Vaquera, Angélica Martín, and Julia Martínez. The latter two are emerging as two cornerstones of the roster. Martín is the second-highest-rated player. The shooting guard averages 8 points and 5 rebounds for a rating of 9.3. Meanwhile, Martínez is the team’s leading offensive force with 11.7 points and 3 assists per game.

 

The León team’s physical strength has been bolstered by the summer signings; as many as three big women have joined to add muscle to the roster of Unicaja Mijas’s rival. They are the Argentines Andrea Boquete and Sol Castro, as well as the Spaniard Lucía Melero. The duo from Argentina brings a mix of experience and youth. While Castro—the team’s top-rated player—is playing her first professional season after making a name for herself in the NCAA, Boquete has nine seasons of FEB competition under her belt. Most recently, she helped Celta Femxa Zorka earn promotion last season.

 

The full array of interior players on the team coached by Rafael González is evident in their scoring efficiency near the basket. The team from Castile and León boasts one of the best two-point field goal percentages in the entire league. Furthermore, despite having won only one of their three games so far, they are currently out of the relegation zone. They also stand out on defense. They are the sixth-best team in terms of points allowed, conceding an average of 67.6 points per game.

 

Although this is Mipelletymas B.F. León’s first season in the Women’s Challenge League, Unicaja Mijas has already faced this team before. They have faced off on four occasions. Those matchups took place between 2021 and 2023, and the overall record favors the Los Guindos team with three wins and just one loss. Interestingly, two of those games were narrow losses for the Málaga team, with shots made practically at the buzzer to turn the score around.

 

Carmen Guillén: “Mipelletymas B.F. León has made some good signings”

Although Unicaja Mijas’s next opponent is a team recently promoted from LF 2, youth academy product Carmen Guillén states that “Mipelletymas B.F. León has made some good signings; they have very good players at center and point guard.” The Los Guindos big woman reveals that “we’ve been training more positively this week, with a lot of energy heading into the game.”

 

Guillén, who is facing her first season as a senior player, makes no secret of the fact that the change felt “a little strange at first.” The player, who joined the youth academy as a cadet, feels that “taking on a more important role on the team was a bit overwhelming for me,” but that her teammates and the coaching staff make it much easier: “Javi, who’s been my coach since I was 15, gives me a lot of confidence, as do the coaching staff and my teammates who help me.”

 

Finally, now that Unicaja Mijas is facing its second home game of the season at Martín Urbano, Carmen Guillén says that “winning our first home game is an incentive, and for that we need the fans to come cheer us on as always—we’re going to give 100% to make it happen.” Buy your ticket HERE for just 5 euros.