CSKA vs. Galatasaray (Istanbul): 86-85 (+1)
CSKA: Teodosic (13 + 4 pf), Micov (6), Fridzon (8 + 4 as), Jackson (4 + 3 rb), Krstic (12 + 5 rb + 3 bs), Weems (12 + 4 rb), Vorontsevich (3), Kaun (14 + 4 rb + 4 pf), Khryapa (7 + 9 rb + 4 as + 3 to), Hines (7 + 6 rb)…
Galatasaray: Erceg (35 + 9 rb + 3 to + 4 pf), Hairston (13 + 4 rb), Markoishvili (6 + 4 rb + 4 as + 4 pf), Aldemir (8 + 6 rb), Macvan (5 + 3 rb + 2 bs), Arroyo (9 + 3 rb + 8 as + 4 pf), Guler (6), Arslan (3)…
Ettore Messina, CSKA head coach:
Surely, it was a difficult game and we knew something like this gonna happen. I wanted to give playing time to our starting point guard Milos Teodosic who missed previous couple of games because of injury, got out of rhythm and it took him a while to catch his game. It was one of the reasons for some disorder in our game. We had some good and bad moments and we know we have to work hard to play solid game in playoffs. Definitely we remember about our confrontation with Real and we would like to win with bigger margin. But I think we lost control of situation when we lost by exactly 14 points in Madrid. When you start to make calculations something bad happens. So we will just roll our sleeves up and continue to work.
Ergin Ataman, Galatasaray head coach:
It think strategically we played perfect game today. We came here to control the game and not to let CSKA run. Our task was not to make much turnovers and we had just 9 which is a good number, so we did not let the opponents to get easy points off turnovers. Erceg played fantastic, career game but our shooters missed too many open shots today, especially Markoishvili who made 2 of 7 and Arroyo who made 1 of 6 threes. Still we had a chance to win the game on the last possession in the fourth quarter but Macvan turned the ball over. For us it was important to win the game or to lose with minimal margin. We reached our goal and now we will wait for the result in Madrid. We did not foul on our last possession in overtime because Arroyo got injured, he had some pains in his leg, and we used short rotation of veteran players. By going to second overtime we could lose with bigger margin because of tiredness so we decided to stop on minus one.
Nenad Krstic, CSKA center:
It was a tough game for us, as you could see, with an overtime. I think we had a bad game, in defense especially. Erceg was really unbelievable today – 35 points – personal record. I saw so many times in my career when a player plays great maybe even best game in his career against his former team. I’m happy that we won and showed our character.
Zoran Erceg, Galatasaray center:
It was a very tough game until the end. Both teams had a chance to win. CSKA won the game on last seconds. Maybe if we won the game in regulation it could be a hundred percent better for us. But what to say… it was a couple of seconds and CSKA played perfect defense. About my record – it was one of the days when you score on all shots. We need to continue playing our best and beat Partizan next round to qualify for playoffs.
