Nizhny Novgorod beat CSKA at home in quarterfinals game 2 – 76:72 (19:19, 21:20, 19:21, 17:12).
Top scorers
Nizhny Novgorod: Anton Astapkovich (19 + 6 rebounds), Kasey Shepherd (13).
CSKA: Ivan Ukhov (12), Will Clyburn (11 + 5 rebounds), Nikita Kurbanov (10 + 14 rebounds), Tornike Shengelia (10 + 5 rebounds).
Story
In the opening game of the series, Nizhny Novgorod struggled for a long time with CSKA on equal footing. The second game followed the same script. Despite an energetic start by CSKA, Anton Astapkovich and Sergey Toropov kept the Army team from pulling away. And shortly before the end of the first quarter, Aleksandre Gavrilovic put the home team ahead for the first time, 15-13.
The Army team briefly regained the lead in the second 10 minutes, going up by 6 after Will Clyburn and Johannes Voigtmann. However, the Volga team closed the first half. Toropov evened the score, and Kasey Shepherd hit the buzzer to give Nizhny Novgorod the lead heading into halftime, just as he had done in the first game.
.@juwanshepherd closes 1st half vs CSKA with the buzzer 🚨
Halftime:@BC_NN – 40
@cskabakset – 39 pic.twitter.com/DwRRSf6dLc— VTB League (@VTBUL) May 13, 2021
The third quarter didn’t radically change the game, although now Nizhny continued to hold the initiative, while CSKA kept chasing. CSKA kept a comfortable lead, however, as the Army team remained within 2-3 points the entire time. A fourth foul by one of Nizhny Novgorod’s most high-scoring players, Sergey Toropov, severely limited the offensive game of Nizhny Novgorod. That forced Volga to focus on Kasey Shepherd’s turnovers. CSKA played with more balance on offense and, after a long shot by Ivan Ukhov, regained the lead for the rest of the quarter, 60-59.
Key moment
At the beginning of the final stretch, the Red and Blue grabbed a five-point lead, but Volga stepped in. Evgeny Baburin, Andrey Vorontsevich and Anton Astapkovich bombarded the basket. Astapkovich was especially impressive in the end, scoring seven points in a row. With 27 seconds left before the final whistle, Nizhny led 74-72 and had the ball.
The Army team committed a tactical foul on Ivan Strebkov, who could nearly guarantee Nizhny Novgorod the win, but failed to hit his first free throw. With 75-72, CSKA had 15 seconds to turn the tide in the game. Evgeny Baburin’s aggressive defense prevented Daniel Hackett from making a well-planned shot from beyond the arc: Missed! Will Clyburn managed to pick up the ball on offense and made another three-point attempt, which also failed. Nizhny Novgorod beat CSKA for the first time in the playoffs, and the series returns to Moscow.
Матч между @BC_NN и @cskabasket превратился в триллер, а последние 2 минуты – это просто 💣💣💣
Если вы пропустили концовку игры, быстрее включайте это видео 😎 pic.twitter.com/Cas5cxVE9F
— VTB League (@VTBUL) May 13, 2021
Hero
Anton Astapkovich. The top scorer of the game and the leader in efficiency (24 points), he wasn’t afraid to take over the game in clutch and made a key contribution to Nizhny Novgorod’s first win over CSKA since 2014.
Stat
1 – Volga beat CSKA in the United League play-offs for the first time in history.
Comments
Nizhny Novgorod head coach Zoran Lukic:
– I congratulate my team on this victory! The guys showed tremendous effort and great energy. If you remember, in our first game in Moscow we were close to CSKA for more than 29 minutes and then fell apart.
The key thing that we need to urgently fix is our starting to control the defense. CSKA blew us away in that department today with 24 offensive rebounds. If that happens again in game 3 we have no chance. We are working on our discipline, improving our details and will try to be our best opponent in the third game of the series.
CSKA head coach Dimitris Itoudis:
– Congratulations to Nizhny! My team shot extremely poorly in the paint today and was a mess on defense at times. On top of that, when you miss so many free throws on the road it seriously affects your final score. There were times when we could have turned the game in our favor, but we committed two turnovers while trailing by five. You can’t do that in the playoffs; you have to stay focused all the time.
Maybe today was one of our worst games on offense. You saw how different the two games were. In the first game we basically crushed Nizhny, but today we weren’t focused enough to make good decisions on offense.
Next
Game 3 of the series takes place on May 15 in Moscow.
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