CSKA vs. Zalgiris Kaunas: 70-61 (+9)
Ettore Messina, CSKA head coach:
This game became difficult mentally before it even started. After Darden left and Popovic got injured, we were supposed to win for sure. Still we remembered that Zalgiris is a very serious team and it always plays hard. We played very well until we built a 15-point lead. After that we’ve just switched off, started to do a lot of bad things. Fortunately we were able to play organized in the last quarter and I was happy with the next eight minutes. Then again we played not so well in the last two minutes. Hopefully we are able to improve because we obviously have big potential. The one thing I told to the team in the locker room is that if you look at the stats, we are probably the best team in the Euroleague; we have great shooting percentage, we are second to Khimki in assists, we have an excellent index rating. Maybe only Barcelona is better than us statistically. And still we can allow ourselves to play such a bad stretches during the games. At least we know what we should work on – stability.
Joan Plaza, Zalgiris head coach:
We should watch the video to say for sure but I think we played hard and gave our best with so many players missing. We had 16 turnovers and we missed a number of easy shots from under the baskets and you can’t win against CSKA with so many mistakes. But I think we made our fans proud of their team by giving huge effort. We won one of the quarters and we were close until the last 3 minutes of the game. I am happy with my team’s effort tonight.
