CSKA won by selection – Sport – Kommersant
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In the central match of the second game week of the VTB United League, Lokomotiv Kuban hosted CSKA vice-champion. For both teams, the face-to-face meeting was the first serious test of their potential since the beginning of the season. The army team managed to get through it better. They won with a score of 84:64 and retained their leadership in the championship.
CSKA and Lokomotiv-Kuban started the championship, let’s say, at a different pace. CSKA won both starting matches. But Krasnodar made a misfire in the first meeting, losing to the MBA. It was regarded as a sensation. But, apparently, the MBA, despite the fact that the Moscow team made its debut in the VTB United League only this season, is not at all as simple as it might seem – after the meeting with Lokomotiv-Kuban, Vasily Karasev’s wards won twice more and were the first in league reached a figure of three wins, gaining a foothold in the top 2 of the championship. Note that the start of the MBA did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the league. Its CEO, Ilona Korstin, noted that the MBA’s results mean the league “made the right choice.” “We were worried about the fact that the Moscow club did not sign a single foreigner. But, despite the fact that the MBA does not have a single legionnaire, the team performs confidently. The team is quite young, the players are motivated, their eyes are on fire. This is all – the style of Vasily Karasev. But, of course, it is difficult for two newcomers, MBA and Samara, to immediately get used to a new level, it takes time to adapt both in sports terms and in terms of marketing.
Be that as it may, after an unsuccessful start, Krasnodar partially rehabilitated itself by defeating Samara. But that’s just part of it. Full compensation for a misfire at the start of the championship could be a victory over CSKA.
Lokomotiv-Kuban’s head coach Alexander Sekulich saw the key to it in a reliable game on the defensive, noting that the army team will probably “try to load their big ones in the” paint “”.
“And around Nikola Milutinov there are enough experienced defenders – good snipers. Against such an opponent, it is important to show good team basketball, to work competently and efficiently in defense, ”said the Slovenian specialist. It is noteworthy that the head coach of CSKA Emil Rajkovic also spoke about defense as the key to victory. He was especially worried about the opponent’s fast play on someone else’s shield. “We have to focus on defense and impose our style of play,” Rajkovic said.
At the beginning of the meeting, it seemed that Krasnodar players understood their coach’s instructions better and approached its implementation more responsibly. The scheme with the game from defense, with fast breaks and long-range shots, fully justified itself.
In some ways, the game of Krasnodar resembled the game of the Slovenian team, which is also coached by Sekulich.
Minus the fact that Lokomotiv still does not have its own Luka Doncic. But by collective efforts, bringing to the throw either Zakhar Vedischev, or Dmitry Uzinsky, or Alexander Shcherbenev, Lokomotiv seemed to be firmly holding the threads of the game in their hands, having achieved an eight-point lead in ten minutes of the game. Unfortunately for the Krasnodar fans, who filled the Basket Hall almost to capacity, their team’s energy reserve dried up. In the second ten-minute period, it took the army team only five minutes to leave nothing from the advantage of the hosts, who, having come under pressure, failed to rebuild the game, while starting to make mistakes. Plus, CSKA managed to reliably close the main earner of Krasnodar Jaylen Barford. In the previous match, he scored 29 points, in the previous game – 23. In the confrontation with CSKA, Barford converted only two out of 12 attacks on the ring and finished the match with four points in the asset.
At the same time, Lokomotiv itself failed to solve the problem of Milutinov. The army center scored a lot, but, more importantly, very often – a total of 11 times – took rebounds. According to the rebounds, the guests outright outplayed the hosts. So there was nothing surprising in the fact that in the third quarter they succeeded in a breakthrough (as it developed, CSKA’s lead after a throw by Jean-Charles Livio reached a dozen points), which decided the outcome of the meeting, which ended in a major victory for the guests – 84:64.
CSKA thus retained a 100% win rate and remained in first place in the standings. Following, also with three wins in three matches, are MBA and UNICS, which are inferior to the army team in additional indicators.
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