CSKA vs. Barcelona: 93-82 (+11)
CSKA: Kulagin (10), Teodosic (16 + 6 as + 4 to), Fridzon (6), Nichols (3 + 3 rb), Lazarev (6 + 3 rb), Vorontsevich (16 + 9 rb + 4 as), Higgins (20 + 5 rb), Kurbanov (4), Hines (12 + 6 rb)…
Barcelona: Doellman (14 + 3 st), Ribas (3 + 5 pf), Lawal (4), Abrines (12 + 3 rb), Navarro (16 + 3 to), Vezenkov (7), Samuels (9), Oleson (3), Perperoglou (11), Tomic (3 + 8 rb)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
Congratulations to the fans who created great atmosphere here in Megasport. They were really heard and they even created a wave around the stands, that was unbelievable. Congratulations to my team – it was really difficult to prepare for tonight’s game. First of all, we faced very strong opponent, well-coached, with great players, system, the team that plays well recently both in Euroleague and Spain. Second, we had bad luck with injuries. Nando De Colo has swollen ankle, he could not play. Joel Freeland is out as well. Pavel Korobkov will undergo surgery on Saturday to clean his knee but he really wanted to play and practiced with us until the doctors decided to leave him out. Milos Teodosic had problems with his neck after being hit to his back on the screen in the game with Avtodor. To tell you the truth I did not know until my pre-game speech if Milos will play or not. But he really wanted to help the team and medical stuff did its best to let him play. Andrey Vorontsevich was also not 100 per cent ready. Aaron Jackson was not supposed to even practice fully with the team until tomorrow or day after tomorrow. But he showed his will, he said that he is ready to take the risk. Overall it all tells about our team spirit. This season everyone wants to play whatever happens, unless the injury is really bad. Everyone wants to cover the teammate’s back. Still we have 11 more difficult games in this Top16, in our group full of great team. We will continue to approach it game by game.
