CSKA Moscow defeated Zenit St. Petersburg at home, 100-84 (24-25, 32-24, 22-15, 22-20).
Top Scorers
CSKA: Sergio Rodriguez (19 + 8 ast), Will Clyburn (18), Semyon Antonov (16), Cory Higgins (11)
Zenit: Kyle Kuric (12), Evgeny Voronov (11), Sergey Karasev (10)
Story
Moscow took revenge on St. Petersburg with a dominant 16-point win at home behind Sergio Rodriguez’s 19 points and eight assists. CSKA was lethal from distance, knocking down 11 of 24 triples, including Semyon Antonov’s 4-4 night.
Trailing 25-24 at the end of the 1st quarter, CSKA opened the 2nd quarter on a 13-2 run, highlighted by an eight-point outburst from swingman Will Clyburn.
The home team never trailed again, nursing a 10-12 point lead for much of the game.
Mikhail Kulagin capped the statement win with a pair of free throws, giving CSKA 100 points for the sixth time in its last seven outings.
The Army Men improve to 21-2 with the victory and need a win in Perm next week to clinch 1st place. Zenit drops to 15-7, one game behind Lokomotiv-Kuban for 3rd place.
Stat
23 – Kyle Kuric and Sergey Karasev combined for only 23 points. After dropping 66 in the win over Enisey, the lack of production from Zenit’s two stars had a big impact on today’s outcome.
Khryapa Swat
Victor Khryapa 🔐 @cskabasket Paint 🚫 pic.twitter.com/olD9fie1yB
— VTB United League (@VTBUL) May 5, 2018
Quotes
CSKA head coach Dimitris Itoudis:
– Congratulations to the players. We won again and continue to battle for 1st place in the VTB League regular season. This was a pretty strange game, for several reasons. First of all, we expected Leo would start. He had some muscle spasms in practice, but was working out with the team. During warmups, though, the doctors told me he wouldn’t be able to play. Then, Cory didn’t feel good at the start of the game. It was probably the humidity in the arena. He needed to catch his breath and drink some water. Then Othello picked up two quick fouls. Given we were without Nando and Kyle, the rotation needed some quick adjustments. On the other hand, given the circumstances, the other guys helped out. We got quality minutes from Misha, Victor, Voro, Semyon, Vitaly. Will, Sergio, Nikita played great. We gave up 49 points in the first half, and only 35 in the second, which shows our progress over the course of the game. Now our main hope is to finally become a healthy team.
Zenit head coach Vasily Karasev:
– Obviously, we were playing against one of the best teams in Europe and several players simply didn’t handle CSKA’s pressure in every aspect. We didn’t play our game. We missed a lot of shots under the basket, free throws, and committed a lot of unnecessary turnovers. CSKA played its style of basketball and we had trouble when Vorontsevich and Antonov played center. They shot 3-pointers at a high percentage, which was tough to overcome.
Up Next
CSKA: May 12 away vs. PARMA
Zenit: May 9 home vs. UNICS
Images of the Game
