Starting fives
Tsmoki-Minsk: Warner Angelo, Beliankou Yauheni, Trastsinetski Aliaksei, Paraliou Tsimafei, Upshaw Robert.
CSKA: Lundberg Iffe, Shved Alexey, Kurbanov Nikita, Shengelia Tornike, Milutinov Nikola.
The script for the game
As CSKA head coach Dimitris Itoudis had promised before the game, his men took their rivalry with Minsk very seriously. The Muscovites played tough defense and attacked with a lot of energy, and nobody fell behind while actively pressing. As a result, the Dragons had to expend too much effort to break through to the basket. Aliaksei Trastsinetski was the first to score, as befits the captain. Then Andrei Stabrouski made a three-pointer and Vadim Stubeda even hit the ball from beyond the basket. Unfortunately, however, those successes didn't help our team hold its own against our powerful opponent. Stellar CSKA took the lead fairly quickly and gradually built up their lead.
In the second quarter, Tsmoki played much tighter on defense and allowed the visitors to score nearly three fewer points. On offense, they didn't score often, either. The first half went to the Red and Blue, 46-17.
The denouement
By and large, the denouement came early in the game, before the break, when CSKA played perfect defense and stifled almost every Minsk attack. The margin of scoring exceeded 20 points, and winning them back against such a great opponent, whose roster is full of big-time stars, seemed extremely difficult, if not impossible. All the more so in the second half, when the CSKA players with equal energy, they didn't slacken their grip on the ball and their high-pressure offense. CSKA really showed everything they were capable of, so it was no disgrace for the young Dragons to lose to one of the strongest clubs in Europe.
Prominent roles
The Muscovites split the playing time fairly evenly, so there was no opportunity for anyone to shine. Nonetheless, CSKA center Nikola Milutinov had a double-double: 14 points and 10 rebounds. Vadim Stubeda was the most efficient player for Minsk: He hit 4 mid-range shots with 100 percent accuracy, made 5 of 6 free throws and collected 13 points and 4 rebounds.
The number
46 - that's how many rebounds CSKA players collected, with 14 of them coming from under the basket for the home team.
The head coach of the Tsmoki-Minsk Rostislav Vergun:
CSKA at the beginning of the season is the best indicator of the strength of your team. today's game clearly showed what we are worth at this point of the season. it's hard for me to blame guys who are in this situation for the first time, but they have good experience under their belt and are expected to have much more leadership qualities, much more desire to take responsibility for the result. Of course, it's worth apologizing to people for the game we showed and which logically led to this result.
The head coach of the CSKA Dimitris Itoudis:
I want to congratulate my team. i think we play to expecting concentrations, we had a huge motivations to play a game. We played not for the score, we play for us first of all and despite the fact We were happy to turn over , 7 turn overs in the first half and then other 6 in the last quarter and it costs us in term of that we should be more better. 13 turns over for us - too many. this level of the game was high. in general we happy, because we have good approach, especially in defenses, we change couple defences. we manage to keep this approach in the team.
Next game
In the second round of the VTB United League Tsmoki-Minsk will play on October 2nd in Krasnodar against the local Lokomotiv. The game starts at 16.00 Belarusian time.