The vice-president of the Slovak Basketball Federation Ivan Benninghaus has urged his country's women's team to keep their concentration in their European Championship qualification return match with Italy.

Slovakia won last week's first meeting in Kosice 82-66 and are big favourites to make it through Tuesday's second encounter on aggregate and guarantee top spot in their group.

Benninghaus told www.basket.sk: "Everybody knows what we are playing for. We have a good advantage and Italy has to win by a bigger margin than 16 points.

"We come to Italy to get as good a result as possible. The best thing will be a win which can decide first place in this group.

"All the girls are ready to win this section of qualification. We know about the power of the Italian team. We know that we have to concentrate in defence."