No compromises

The Euroleague group stage finishes for our team in Athens. The army men flew there by Transaero charter flight today.

In the fight for 1-2 “home-court advantage” places in Group E CSKA can lose with some affordable point difference. But the team does not want to even think about it.

“It will be the key game for both teams who are trying to improve their positions in the last game of the Top 16,” CSKA head coach Ettore Messina said. “And it will be also a weird game for us because we know that even a loss with some kind of point-difference can leave us on the first place in a group. But we will do our best to isolate ourselves of this kind of thoughts because otherwise, if you allow yourself to lose, you will definitely lose and it will hurt the mentality of the team. This game is also important for us because we need to finish the Top 16 strong and gain more confidence before the start of playoffs. Going back to basketball, Panathinaikos is a great defensive team which had couple of excellent wins on the road recently. On offense they are great in post-up situations so we have to guard them carefully.”

There are 13 players on the team’s away roster. Evgeny Voronov and Alexander Gudumak were left in Moscow.