Railway workers pulled to the end – Kommersant
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Lokomotiv-Kuban has taken another step towards creating a big sensation. Krasnodar won the third match of the semi-final series against CSKA with a score of 84:81 and took the lead 2:1. The fourth match of the series up to four wins will take place on Saturday also in Krasnodar.
The CSKA-Lokomotiv-Kuban pair seemed to be the simplest, perhaps, in the semi-final play-off confrontations. And it’s not just that the army team was, no doubt, the first in the regular season, and the Krasnodar team was only fifth. In the course of the season, Lokomotiv-Kuban did not even manage to identify noticeable opposition in the matches against CSKA. In four face-to-face meetings of the regular season, Krasnodar lost only once with a difference of less than 20 points. And where the railroad could suddenly find the resources to resist the army machine in the playoffs was completely incomprehensible. However, the coach of Lokomotiv-Kuban, Alexander Sekulich, still found solutions that made CSKA head coach Emil Raikovich nervous. They appeared in the first match of the series, which CSKA won with great difficulty, thanks primarily to Nikola Milutinov and Kasper Weir, who dragged the team (they scored 51 points between them). And already in the second match, as soon as Krasnodar played a little more successfully against the army leaders, there was a mini-sensation. “Lokomotiv-Kuban” won and took away from Moscow, in general, an unplanned one in the “Victory” column. But, perhaps, much more unpleasant than the defeat itself (there was no catastrophe in it), for CSKA fans there was the loss of Milutinov. The Serbian “big”, who on average brings his team a half dozen points per match and makes more than nine rebounds (the best figure in the league), injured his ankle at the end of the second match and did not fly to Krasnodar. According to the official website of Lokomotiv-Kuban, which demonstrates an enviable knowledge of military affairs, Milutinov will appear on the site no earlier than the fifth match of the series, that is, when the teams return to Moscow.
Raikovich, however, managed to solve the problem of Milutinov’s absence, as it seemed, without any problems. The absence of the main center did not prevent the army team from hosting under the opponent’s shield, where Alexey Shved, Devonte Kaykok, and even the completely oversized Weir, whose runs under the basket consistently put the defense of the hosts to a standstill, felt very at ease. And out of habit, he definitely hit from a distance, and the owners could not find an antidote for this.
In general, at the beginning of the match, the railroad workers looked as if they did not understand that the game had already begun, and therefore somehow routinely lagged behind by 14 points by the end of the first ten minutes.
Yes, Jaylen Barford tried to do something, Andriy Martyuk looked good in the episodes, but Sekulich’s team did not demonstrate a coherent game, primarily in attack. Probably, he himself saw this very well, and therefore tried to somehow start a team. But he overdid it. Sekulich in the second quarter in just a minute received two technical fouls for overly emotional disputes with the referees and was forced to leave the site. At the moment, oddly enough, it even cheered up the hosts a little, but after a long break, the game returned to its previous mode: CSKA controlled the course of the confrontation, keeping the opponent within attacking distance, and Lokomotiv-Kuban unconvincingly tried to do something about it.
But this somewhat lulling regime cost CSKA dearly. Raikovich has yet to find out at what point his team overslept the inclusion of the Krasnodar steam locomotive in full power mode. It seems that the owners did not do anything special. Well, Devon Akoon-Purcell hit and picked up well several times, Okaro White joined the game, Burford played with his usual delay. But it was these apparently disparate events that formed the Krasnodar wave, which CSKA was unable to cope with, or maybe simply did not have time to respond to it. After all, the hosts for the first time in the entire match took the lead when the siren was less than a minute away. CSKA still had chances to save the game, but neither Shved nor Ware, who tried to become the saviors of the army team, succeeded. Lokomotiv-Kuban won with a score of 84:81 and took the lead in the series. Her fourth match will take place on Saturday in Krasnodar.
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