The army team waited for Lokomotiv – Sport – Kommersant
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On Wednesday, two semi-finalists of the play-off championship of the VTB United League were determined. CSKA was the first in the top 4, beating Avtodor Saratov with a score of 76:67, which made the score 3:0 in the series. A couple of hours later Lokomotiv-Kuban beat Nizhny Novgorod 92:81 at home and also recorded a 3-0 score in the series. Now the army team and the railroad will compete for a place in the final with each other.
From the confrontation between the strongest team of the regular championship, CSKA, and Avtodor, which squeezed into the playoffs from eighth place, there was no need to expect much intrigue. The first two, Moscow, matches of the quarterfinal series only confirmed the validity of this attitude. The second meeting turned out to be especially indicative, in which all questions were actually removed by the middle of the first quarter. But even so, it was obvious that the Saratov team would try to slam the door loudly before finishing the season. The match at home was quite suitable for this. Moreover, during its course, for a long time, the feeling did not leave the feeling that for Branislav Vicentić’s wards this may not be the last game of the season. After all, Avtodor immediately joined the work of the winner of the prize for the most productive player of the season, Malik Newman, and the hosts even organized a lead of seven points. CSKA, of course, pulled themselves up, but the Saratov team had already got a taste for it and, on courage, gave out an impressive spurt, the top of which was the throw of Evgeny Minchenko. After him, Avtodor’s lead reached 11 points.
But then the inevitable began to happen.
The longer the match lasted, the more obvious was the difference in the equipment of the teams, in the notorious length of the bench.
Yes, Avtodor was good for the same Newman, who scored 23 points in the end (the best result in the match), Danilo Nikolic was not bad, the team tried to show fast basketball. But at the same time, Vicentić was forced to play with a truncated rotation of nine players. And CSKA coach Emil Raikovich had no problems with the reserve. And, in fact, it was the army bench players, plus Casper Ware, who somehow gave three long-range hits in a row, and Nikola Milutinov, who scored and rebounded with approximately the same efficiency (15 points and 12 rebounds), provided CSKA with the desired result. Suffice it to say that the “bench” of CSKA scored 45 points for the game, against 31 points recorded on the account of the starting five. Avtodor has a different indicator, indicating that the team lacks the depth of the line-up: 53 points on the account of the starting five and only 14 on the bench. The result was a well-deserved and expected victory for CSKA with a score of 76:67. She brought the score in the series to 3:0 and provided the army team with a ticket to the semi-finals.
CSKA will have to compete with Lokomotiv-Kuban for a place in the final. Krasnodar won the first two away games of their series against Nizhny Novgorod (we note that during the regular season the railway workers lost to Nizhny Novgorod four times) and came home to qualify for the semi-finals. The wards of Oleksandr Sekulich coped with the task. Not without difficulty, of course. At first, the Krasnodar match was completely equal.
But fortunately for Lokomotiv-Kuban, that evening two of its leaders immediately caught the courage: Jaylen Burford and Chris Horton scored 49 points together.
True, the guests, who seemed to be hopelessly behind by the end of the third quarter (Krasnodar’s lead was 20 points), had a chance to catch on to the game: in the final ten minutes, they gave a breakthrough 11:1. But Sekulich reacted in time, brought the team to its senses, and it won with a score of 92:81.
Let’s note that on Thursday UNICS can go to the semi-finals. To do this, Kazan needs to beat Parma in the third match of the series. But in the Zenit-MBA pair, the score is a draw after two games, and the strongest will be revealed no earlier than April 8, when the fourth game will take place.
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