CSKA — Pari NN, 29 January 2015

CSKA vs. N Novgorod: 103-95 (+8)

CSKA: De Colo (13 + 8 rb + 4 as), Teodosic (25 + 4 rb + 5 as + 5 to + 4 pf), Fridzon (7), Nichols (6), Jackson (15 + 5 rb + 6 as + 4 pf), Markoishvili (2), Vorontsevich (22 + 9 rb), Kaun (11 + 3 rb), Hines (2 + 5 rb)…

N Novgorod: Baburin (9), Parakhovskiy (18 + 8 rb + 2 bs), Antonov (1 + 4 rb + 5 pf), Kinsey (19 + 10 rb + 4 pf), Rochestie (22 + 4 rb + 9 as + 3 st + 5 pf), Savelyev (4), Tompkins (22 + 7 rb + 4 pf)…

We got another win and we expected this game to be difficult. We are not in our best moment, under stress with minor injuries and absences. Still we work hard, stay professional and, as you see, we keep winning. I said in the locker room after the game that I am proud of the team’s effort. We have to walk through this hard period, do some treatment, recover, sleep well, eat well. Nizhny had momentum in this game. They were coming to Moscow considered the underdogs, but we know they are a good team with good players like Rochestie, Kinsey, Parakhouski, Tompkins. We focused on stopping Rochestie and tried not to forget about their secondary creators like Antonov and Khvostov, who are also good players, but they played poor games tonight. We were up by 11 with 4:51 to go, but Nizhny went on to score 6 quick points and returned to the game. Even though we weren’t at our best we still found the ways to win. Congratulations to the team and thank you to the fans who supported us really well.

It was a tough game, we knew that Nizhny is a very good team, they showed that they can play really good basketball. They did it in a passing game and it was very difficult. We played 45 minutes till the end and this is the most important. I think nobody expected the game like this and Nizhny did that very good, they were confident and knew how to play together and especially on defense. But today we were focused on our game.