Avtodor defeated Tsmoki-Minsk at home, 88-81 (23-17, 17-17, 28-18, 20-29).
Top Scorers
Avtodor: Nick Minnerath (30+5 reb), Sergey Bykov (16+5 ast), Evgeny Kolesnikov (11+8 reb)
Tsmoki-Minsk: Antonio Graves (14+5 reb), Justin Gray (13+5 ast), Aliaksandr Semianiuk (12), Dru Joyce (11+10 ast)
Turning Point
After a tightly-contested first half, Avtodor got going in the 3rd quarter. Nick Minnerath, anyway, turned it on. The Saratov big man showed why he was picked for the All-Star Game in Sochi, dropping 18 points in the quarter, including seven straight.
Minnerath was on fire, draining four 3-pointers to go with a pair of vicious dunks.
Saratov led by as much as 25 in the 3rd quarter, taking a 16-point advantage in the final period.
Tsmoki made a comeback, led by recent addition Antonio Graves, cutting the deficit to five with 1:25 to play, but Evgeny Kolesnikov was able to knock down a big ‘3’ and Avtodor held on for the win.
After getting smashed by Nizhny Novgorod on Saturday, Avtodor improves to 5-9, half a game back of Enisey for the final playoff spot.
Tsmoki-Minsk drops to 3-11, a big setback to the team’s postseason hopes.
Stat
18 – number of points scored in the 3rd quarter by Nick Minnerath, a new league-high this season. As a team, Tsmoki was only able to score 18 in the period.
Quotes
Avtodor head coach Vladimir Antsiferov:
– I’ve got mixed emotions from the game. We played well in the first half, but couldn’t build on our lead since we weren’t hitting open shots. In the second half, we picked up a big advantage, but weren’t able to hold it. We committed four straight turnovers and weren’t able to defend in transition. That’s bad. Without those turnovers, we could have finished the game with a bigger advantage. The mistakes were the reason for the stressful finish.
Congrats to my players! A win is a win, even if it wasn’t pretty. We might have been a little too wound up for the game. A big thank you to the fans for supporting us until the end. We don’t know yet the severity of Makiev’s injury. Why didn’t Adams play much? He didn’t fit the game. Why were the visitors able to cut the deficit from 25 points to five? We didn’t really stop playing hard, but we thought things would get easier, even though our opponents had no intention of giving up.
Tsmoki-Minsk head coach Igor Grishchuk:
– I think the fans enjoyed the game. We managed to make a comeback, but it was too late, unfortunately. We slept through the first five minutes of the 3rd quarter, when we went down 25 points. That’s the reason for the outcome. How did we cut the deficit to five? Thanks to our aggressive defense. But we used a lot of energy on the comeback. It’s encouraging that we were able to fight and demonstrate our character.
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Up Next
Avtodor: February 5 at CSKA
Tsmoki-Minsk: February 5 vs. UNICS
