UNICS Kazan defeated Nizhny Novgorod at home in overtime, 99-93 (22-22, 17-29, 24-15, 21-18, 15-9).
Top Scorers
UNICS: Stephane Lasme (27 + 8 reb), Quino Colom (20 + 7 ast), Jamar Smith (16)
Nizhny Novgorod: Stevan Jelovac (22 + 14 reb), Maxim Grigoryev (17), Dmitry Uzinsky (12)
Story
Nizhny guard Ivan Strebkov forced overtime with a clutch 3-pointer, but UNICS responded with a dominant extra period, cruising to its 20th win of the season, 99-93.
Stephane Lasme led UNICS with 27 points and eight rebounds, while Trent Lockett scored six points in overtime as UNICS moved into a tie for 1st place with CSKA.
Nizhny Novgorod enjoyed another big game from Stevan Jelovac (22 points and 14 rebounds) and led by 12 at halftime, but needed Strebkov’s heroics to force overtime and shot only 2-12 in the extra period.
Zoran Lukic’s club drops to 8-14 with the loss, one game up on VEF, Tsmoki-Minsk, Astana and PARMA for one of the two final playoff spots.
Strebkov’s Triple
OVERTIME IN KAZAN! pic.twitter.com/C0V0TpY5PR
— VTB United League (@VTBUL) April 29, 2018
Stat
11-40 – Nizhny Novgorod lived and died from the three-point line, hitting several big shots to force overtime, before going cold in overtime.
Quotes
UNICS head coach Dimitris Priftis:
– I want to begin by saying that I really respect Nizhny as a team. They’ve got a unique style. I knew the game would be tough, like our first meeting. We weren’t ready at all for the first half. We were very slow and unfocused. We turned it around in the second half and got better on defense. You could see it in the score each quarter. The game itself was very difficult. But we won, congrats to the players.
Nizhny Novgorod head coach Zoran Lukic:
– We played poorly. We weren’t able to stop a simple pick-and-roll with Colom and Lasme. But once again on our way to overtime, we made two out of six free throws. Gubanov went 1-4 and Komolov 1-2. You know, when the game falls apart, but you have a situation where you can take advantage with a simple shot from the free-throw line and you miss because of nerves–it’s impossible to win like that. We got the game to overtime, but we ran out of steam. Some of the players were very tired. That’s how we lost the game. Congratulations to Kazan. I hope we were a worthy opponent for a team that is in 2nd place in the standings. We had plenty of desire and passion. That was obvious. We beat ourselves.
Up Next
UNICS: May 4 away vs. PARMA
Nizhny Novgorod: May 8 home vs. Avtodor
Images of the Game
