CSKA — Limoges CSP, 18 December 2014

CSKA vs. Limoges CSP: 88-56 (+32)

CSKA: De Colo (5 + 5 as), Astapkovich (5), Fridzon (19 + 3 rb + 5 as), Nichols (10), Jackson (7 + 4 rb + 4 as + 4 to), Markoishvili (10 + 4 rb + 5 as), Strebkov (6), Vorontsevich (12 + 7 rb), Kaun (7 + 4 rb), Hines (7 + 5 rb)…

Limoges CSP: Tchicamboud (8), Smith (12), Westermann (4), Camara (4 + 4 rb), Batista (2), Moerman (2 + 4 rb), Curry (11 + 4 rb + 4 as), Southerland (3), Boungou-Colo (6), Plaisted (2 + 4 rb), Zerbo (2 + 6 rb)…

Congratulations to our players, we played better and deserved to win. The game was meaningless: Limog will continue in Eurocup, and I wish them good luck, we were first in a group already. Still we respected ourselves and the opponents, we led all 40 minutes. The game was special because it was dedicated to the memory of Ruslan [Gagloyev], our junior, who tragically passed away on Monday. We talked to the players about it, and everyone wanted to play hard, to show quality basketball. I would like to repeat my deepest condolences to Ruslan’s family, relatives, loving ones… I would like also to congratulate our team with good regular season. We played good basketball in most of the games, we shared the ball well. Though we understand that it all starts from zero in Top 16, all 8 teams in our group have equal chances. We are far from perfect. And we want all our players back healthy to continue working hard.

Each game we should take seriously. The most difficult game to play was the previous against Unicaja. After such victories you need to recover very quickly and be ready to the next fight. I’m very glad that we had successful first group round. But Top 16 is another deal – there you have more high-level teams you need to beat. There will be no time to relax.

I’m very glad that I’m back and in the game again after a long recovery process. Today we had a great defense and did not let our opponent to get easy shots. On offense all the guys helped each other so we felt very confident.