A good marksman may miss

Barcelona vs. CSKA: 85-72 (-13)

Barcelona: Ribas (6 + 4 rb), Hanga (10 + 5 rb + 4 as), Navarro (10), Heurtel (12 + 3 rb + 8 as + 4 pf), Vezenkov (5 + 4 rb), Oriola (11 + 3 rb), Koponen (13 + 3 rb), Claver (5 + 2 bs), Tomic (8 + 7 rb + 3 to), Moerman (5 + 7 rb)…

CSKA: De Colo (23 + 6 rb + 4 pf), Fridzon (6 + 4 pf), Rodriguez (9 + 4 as + 4 to), Vorontsevich (4 + 3 rb), Clyburn (4 + 5 rb), Higgins (9 + 4 rb + 3 to + 4 pf), Kurbanov (3), Hines (10 + 6 rb), Hunter (4 + 5 rb)…

Congratulations to Barcelona. They were better than us and deserved the victory. We made our efforts to come back. We managed to come within 5 at halftime, but the fact that they were more decisive and they were playing like, I would say, don’t get me wrong, like a wounded animal with an instinct of survival. Basketball-wise, they had been growing in previous games, even in some of the games they had lost, for instance, against Baskonia. They made good shots, play well in transition and this is what hurt us the most. Of course, they grabbed a lot of offensive rebounds and we were not able to contain the physicality and the speed they had. So, today, that’s a good lesson for us. I talked after the game against Baskonia, when the first round ended, and said that we were in the first spot, but were going to face the second round really humble and go to work. Obviously, we didn’t prepare the game for that. We knew that Barcelona would play like a wounded animal, trying to survive with its instincts and we did not, so congratulations again.