Боевой финал

CSKA vs. Zalgiris Kaunas: 73-81 (-8)

CSKA: Bolomboy (0), Higgins (21 + 3 as + 4 pf), Hackett (14 + 3 as + 4 to + 5 pf), Lopatin (4 pf), Hunter (10 + 7 rb) – start; Khomenko (2), Peters (10 + 4 pf), Vostrikov (3 rb), Maleyko (DNP), Gavrilov (3 as), Tonoyan (DNP), Hines (16 + 6 rb + 3 as + 2 st + 2 bs + 4 pf)…

Zalgiris: Davies (4 + 4 rb + 2 st + 4 pf), Wolters (18 + 3 rb + 3 as + 4 pf), Walkup (2), Uleckas (2 st + 4 pf), Jankunas (9 + 2 as) – start; Sabeckis (2 as), Birutis (2 + 4 rb), Milaknis (12 + 3 rb), White (4 + 3 rb + 3 as), Jokubaitis (4 + 3 as), Grigonis (15 + 3 rb + 2 as + 2 st), Kavaliauskas (11 + 5 rb + 3 to)…

We were competitive most of the game until the moment with 4 minutes to go when we were 1 point up. The level of the tournament requires to have more players present to contribute, unfortunately we were shorthanded, in fact we had just 5 active players who were doing good things for the team. As a positive moment I’ll note that when Zalgiris went up +7 we had good reaction after the timeout, we took over the lead. As a bad moment we allowed 12 offensive boards to Zalgiris. We were playing big to protect our paint but they were better on offensive rebounding. Definitely they are more prepared and ready to start official competitions next week. They have almost complete team that went to the Euroleague Final Four last season, they miss only Ulanovas. Overall it was a good tournament for us, we will watch the film and play smarter in Zadar and prepare towards Gomelsky Cup, to become better and better day by day.