Zielona Gora - Tsmoki-Minsk - 89:75 (24-13, 24-28, 16-11, 25-23)
Top scorers:
Zelena Gora: Jeffrey Grossel (23 + 4 rebounds), Cecil Williams (15 + 4 rebounds)
Tsmoki-Minsk: Chris Klayborn (25 + 5 rebounds + 4 assists), Vladimir Veremeenko (12 + 7 rebounds), Maxim Salash (12 + 5 rebounds + 4 assists)
Tsmoki closed their sick leave and went to Poland, where Zielona Gora was already waiting for them. The Poles had 4 defeats and a great desire to interrupt this series of failures.
The first half of the meeting was marked by a duel between Jeffrey Grossel and Chris Klayborn. Pole's partners put a lot of balls on him in the starting segment, taking advantage of the fact that the Belarusians cannot cope with the overall center. After just 10 minutes of the game, Gora had a double-digit advantage. The Belarusian American, in turn, gave an excellent three-minute in the second segment, hitting twice from the perimeter and once making his trademark pass. Tsmoki were close to a comeback when Rob hit from the arc and reduced the backlog of Minskers to “-1”, but obviously, the team did not always have enough strength.
Jan Tabak worked on the errors. After a long break, Gora took care of Klayborn Jr. so tightly that he managed to make only 1 shot in the third quarter. The role of a sniper had to be taken over by Maxim Salash, who clearly failed in the first half of the meeting. Signature hook, accurate free throws and a shot from the perimeter allowed the forward to overcome the 10-point bar.
Perhaps the key aspect of this meeting was the failure of Dragons in the paint: Minskers managed to score only 24 points, while Gura - 52.
Head coach Tsmoki-Minsk Rostislav Vergun:
It was our first game after 3 or 4 weeks break. It was probably naive to expect something spectacular facing really solid, good coached and balanced team.I think we did our best, and that's our level at that point.