CSKA in the final

Moscow army team moved to the final of the 11th of the traditional memorial Kondrashin-Belov Cup by beating Skyliners from Germany in the semifinal. Tomorrow CSKA will play against Prokom Poland in the final.

CSKA vs Skyliners: 96-51

For a first time this midseason our team played in the full roster except Sergey Monya who is still recovering after the pneumonia. Dusan Ivkovic put Holden, Brown, Granger, Dikoudis and Andersen to the starting five.

Both teams did not hurry up and tried to find their play and adapt to each other. In the first half of the first quarter Skyliners could score only 3 points while the army team scored 11 points already: 11-3. Dusan Ivkovic who had full roster could make many substitutions. After the second foul of Andersen he put into the court Alexey Savrasenko. One minute later Muursepp substituted Dikoudis with such number of personal fouls. Estonian forward increased our advantage to 10 points: 17-7. On the last seconds of the quarter Antonio Granger could make advantage double but he missed his 3-pointer.

After the gap Zakhar Pashutin substituted American player. In the beginning of the second quarter army players continued to increase their advantage. But in the middle of this period Skyliners players has shown that they are not ready to play only second role and started to recover. Dusan Ivkovic had to take time-out. After it during three minutes only CSKA players scored any points. Andersen and Pashutin scored 10 points in a row for their team.

After the big rest it were not some questions about the winner of the game. So, CSKA just continued to show beautiful play. Dusan Ivkovic had a very good situation to use all his players. Till 2 minutes to the last rest Holden increased advantage to 30 points: 66-36. David Andersen put an effect dot in the quarter by scoring 2 points after receiving the basket in the air after the good assist of Holden.

After the gap Vasily Zavoruev substituted Marcus Brown. Playing not more a minute young guard of CSKA made a steal and scored 3-pointer. After him Yaroslav Korolev moved to the court. Spectators supported both players very much. Unfortunately his throw from the middle of the court did not moved into the basket.


The head coach of CSKA Dusan Ivkovic:

I am very glad and proud to participate in the tournament in Saint Petersburg for a second year in a row. For CSKA these games are good preparation for a new season. We can find our mistakes and work with physical conditions of players. We have big targets for a new season. Today we were some lucky because our opponent did not show their good game. We were very good in the defense during the entire game do not letting Skyliners to score more then 14 points in a quarter. I think that tomorrow will be absolutely another game.

The head coach of Skyliners Murat Didin:

First of all I would like to thank the organizations of tournament for their offer to participate in it. I think that we all remember Olympic final USSR – USA where Alexander Belov scored his gold winning basket. That time I was just a little boy watching this game by TV. Now my team is playing on the tournament to the memory of this player and his coach who made so much for Soviet basketball. Today I joked in the locker room, I said my players that we must to pay CSKA one-month salary to play with them one more time. For us this game was a very good practice despite our lose with the big difference.