BC Azovmash Mariupol has been the most consistent Ukrainian team in the Eurocup and now enters its sixth consecutive season in the competition. Azovmash survived the Qualifying Round to get to the 2011-12 Eurocup, though it bowed out at the end of the regular season. Back home, Azovmash reached the Ukrainian League finals before losing against BC Donetsk. Over the years, Azovmash has proved to be competitive, although it has never managed to go past the Last 16, which will be the club's big challenge in 2012-13. Basketball has been played in Mariupol since the 1950s but it was not until the mid-1970s that Novator, which eventually became Azovmash, was founded. By 1990, Azovmash was competing in the Ukrainian zone of the USSR League. When Ukraine became an independent country in 1991, Azovmash joined the third league. The club won the second division in 1998 to gain promotion to the Ukrainian elite and played in the 1999 Korac Cup. Azovmash soon found success by lifting its first-ever domestic trophy, the 2002 Ukrainian Cup. Its road to success was completed in 2003 when it lifted both the Ukrainian League and the FIBA Europe Challenge Cup trophy. Azovmash added another Ukrainian League title in 2004 and soon made a financial effort to improve the team by landing Khalid El-Amin and Serhiy Lishchuk. Those moves helped the club to win the first of five consecutive Ukrainian League trophies in 2006. El-Amin, Bajramovic, Panagiotis Liadelis and Lishchuk took Azovmash to the 2007 FIBA EuroCup final, where it lost against Akasvayu Girona. The club joined the Eurocup in 2007-08 and reached the Eurocup Last 16 in 2008-09, when it also won its second consecutive Ukrainian double – league and cup titles. Although Azovmash has not advanced past the Eurocup regular season in any of the last three seasons, Azovmash has landed marquee players like Daniel Ewing, Oleksiy Pecherov, Ricky Minard, Ramel Curry, Fred House and Hasan Rizvic, among many others. Azovmash knows first-hand how tough the Eurocup has become over the years, but can use that experience as an advantage to work its way back to the Last 16 and keep fighting to reach even higher. Ambitious, determined and ready, Azovmash will again be a tough opponent for all-comers.ack in 2011-12.