Lokomotiv-Kuban extended its army series
[ad_1]
In the central match of the week of the VTB United League regular championship, Lokomotiv-Kuban hosted championship leader CSKA. This was the third meeting of the teams this season and again the victory went to the Krasnodar team – this time they won with a score of 89:85. The hero of the match was railroad forward Devon Akun-Purcell, who scored 30 points.
Lokomotiv-Kuban traditionally belongs to the small number of teams that almost always managed to upset CSKA at least once during the season. And sometimes it can be very upsetting. As in the semi-finals of the play-offs of last season, in which the Krasnodar team beat CSKA in seven matches – the army team, therefore, for the first time in its history did not even make it to the final. But this season, the ability of Alexander Sekulic’s team to cope with the army machine has reached new heights. After all, Lokomotiv-Kuban managed to beat CSKA twice even before Saturday’s meeting. The first time was in the quarterfinals of the League Super Cup, the second time in the first round of the regular season. By the way, this was CSKA’s first defeat in the current championship, which the army team confidently leads.
However, looking at how events developed at the beginning of the Krasnodar match, a suspicion creeped in that the railway workers would not achieve a series of three victories in a row over CSKA (in fact, even four if you count the seventh match of last year’s semi-final series).
The hosts were doing very poorly with long-range shots. The army team, on the contrary, achieved the goal in more than half of its attempts.
As a result, already in the second quarter, after Amat M’Bai’s hit, the army team’s lead, which had remained not terrible for a long time (two or three possessions), acquired the very tangible outlines of an impending disaster. CSKA is 15 points ahead!
Fortunately, for the Krasnodar public, who bought up all the tickets for this match, the game did not turn into a kind of formality for the teams. Sekulic did not lose the thread of managing the team; even before the big break, Lokomotiv-Kuban, whose aim had finally been adjusted by Devon Akun-Purcell, reduced the gap to a much more acceptable nine points. And after the break, the hosts made a mind-blowing 18:3 spurt (their three-point shots finally flew). And then CSKA coach Emil Raikovich had to figure out how to save the situation. It turned out quite successfully. The guests had a good match from M’Bye, Melo Trimble, and Tony Jekiri, who pulled off a 14:2 response spurt and regained the lead before the last 10 minutes.
However, it was small and it was clear that this match would not go without a nervous ending. And so it happened.
And the key factors in this ending were, firstly, Akun-Purcell, who produced a series of 8 consecutive points scored (with 30 points to his credit, the Trinidadian became the most productive player of the meeting), and secondly, the defense of Krasnodar, which mysteriously forced CSKA into an unacceptably lose the ball. In fact, during the game the army team had 21 losses (the worst figure for CSKA in a season), of which a good quarter occurred in the last minutes of the match. But despite this, the guests fought to the end and almost even caught up with the enemy. However, Melo Trimble made a turnover at the most crucial moment and Lokomotiv-Kuban brought the match to victory with a score of 89:85.
“A very important victory. Both from a tournament point of view and because today we played in front of a full arena. Everyone knows the level of CSKA, so I’m truly proud of how our players played against such an opponent,” Sekulic noted after the match. “We had a lot of problems in the first half. We allowed our opponents to score easy points and made a lot of mistakes. But we successfully made changes during the long break, which allowed us to turn the tide of the match. I’d be lying if I said that I’m not happy about the victory and I’m not proud of the guys. But we cannot allow ourselves to think that we have already achieved something important. The season continues, the only thing that matters is how we play at the end of the season.”
[ad_2]
Source link