CSKA beat Lokomotiv Kuban at home — 91:71 (22:17, 32:34, 22:8, 15:12).
The best scorers
CSKA: Alexey Shved (15 + 10 assists), Daniel Hackett (15), Nikola Milutinov (13 + 8 rebounds), Marius Grigonis (12 + 5 assists)
Lokomotiv Kuban: Errick McCollum (13), Zakhar Vedishchev (11), Vladislav Emchenko (10)
Game progress
From the very first minutes, Lokomotiv showed a desire to rehabilitate for the failed game with Astana. Loko restrained the pressure of CSKA frontcout in the first minutes (Nikola Milutinov was very active), the guests equalized the game. The young Vladislav Emchenko, who scored a 3-pointer, and then scored and-one, acted effectively. By the end of the 1st quarter, Loko trailed, but the score difference was not critical – 22:17.
The 2nd quarter began with Loko offensive pressure: Alexandr Shcherbenev and Jaylen Barford 3-pointers allowed Loko to reduce the gap to a minimum. That was like a signal – the teams started playing high-scoring basketball. At some point, the guests began to seize the lead – Andrey Martiuk put Loko ahead with two shots scored. However, the end of the quarter remained for CSKA: Nikola Milutinov played outstanding again and score 6 points. But Errick McCollum and Zakhar Vedishchev did not allow CSKA to raise ththeir lead – 54:51 after the 1st half of the game.
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The key moment
During the halftime, the Army team made some adjustments in defensive and deprived Loko to run into the fastbreaks and not giving them fany place on the perimeter. At the same time, CSKA began to play quicker without long possessions. Daniel Hackett actions led to 8:2 run (Hackett scored all 8 points). Branko Maksimovic was forced to take atimeout, but even after that the game did not change — Alexey Shved subbed Hackett as a striking force and scored 5 points in a row.
Loko took the second time-out already while loosing by 14 points. Before the end of the 3rd quarter, Semen Antonov and Ivan Ukhov also scored 3-pointers. Having won the quarter 22:8, CSKA practically designated the winner of the game. In the 4th quarter, the hosts calmly controlled game, ending it with 20-point lead. The Army team wins the second victory in a row and continues to pursue Avtodor, which beat Nizhny Novgorod in a parallel match and remained in third place — at least until March 7, when CSKA and Saratov will sort things out in a face-to-face confrontation.
Hero
Alexey Shved. CSKA guard became the best scorer of the game with Daniel Hackett, and also led CSKA offense with 10 assists. Shved got a double-double in less than 25 minutes.
Numbers
10 – the number of Alexey Shved assists in this game. This is the career high for him in CSKA. In this game, Shved got a double-double with 15 points and 10 assists.
Comments
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA Head Coach:
– Congratulations to the team for the win and serious game. Actually, we had only one bad defensive quarter, in the second quarter we loose the ball under our basket. The ball always was their, we were not good in hustle. We gave up 34 points. As you can see, we have changed this in the second half, we move our focun on how we are going to defend, and gave up 20 point in total in the second half. We were rotating, they got two out of eight from the 3-point line, not giving easy looks. We managed to force turnovers. In offense we do not have any problem. We moved the ball well and we have good flow of the game. Congratulations to the players and the fans.
Branko Maksimovic, Lokomotiv Kuban Acting Coach:
– Congratulations to CSKA and Coach Itoudis on the performance today. We got an idea of what we wanted to do in this game, and when we followed some game plan, we looked good. But sometimes we lost focus, let CSKA score easy shots in the paint and from the 3-point line. CSKA is experienced team, one of the best in Europe, and they took advantage of our mistakes.
What’s next
CSKA: road game Avtodor on March 7
Lokomotiv Kuban: home game versus Nizhny Novgorod on March 2
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