CSKA Moscow vs. Baskonia Vitoria: 112-84 (+28)
CSKA: Kulagin (2 + 4 pf), Teodosic (34 + 10 as), Augustine (13 + 10 rb), Fridzon (14), Jackson (8 + 5 as), Antonov (3), Vorontsevich (8), Higgins (8 + 4 as), Kulagin (6), Khryapa (5 + 4 rb), Kurbanov (7 + 10 rb), Hines (4)…
Baskonia : Larkin (18 + 2 bs), Bargnani (8 + 3 rb), Voigtmann (9 + 9 rb), Hanga (12), Beaubois (19 + 4 pf), Blazic (5 + 4 rb), Shengelia (10 + 3 to), Budinger (3)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
Congratulations to my team and all of my players for the win and the outstanding performance, especially in the last three quarters. We knew that before this game – and I am not using this as an excuse – that Baskonia had a Spanish League home game on Sunday and we had to play on the road on Monday. They had more days to prepare and relax. I don’t know if it was that, but we gave up a lot of easy things; we were not aggressive on the boards in the first quarter and they hit big shots, 5 of 7 from three-point range in that first quarter. We talked about that, but gave them a lot of easy things. We had reactions, but not actions. We wanted to be active defensively. The results of three quarters, second, third and fourth, talks a bit about how we changed the chip and the approach to the game defensively and offensively. We outscored them, outran them, outrebounded them and the score was 96-57 in these three quarters. We had 16 offensive rebounds and they had 17 defensive rebounds. I know it was a day of records, but my players don’t care about that. It is not about the individual records, it is all about CSKA and we are looking forward to breaking records all together. Milos had an outstanding night, offensively and defensively. He had some records tonight – congratulations to him for passing the 1,000-assist mark, but I want to mention the extremely good job that James Augustine did at both ends. He gave us the tone that it was necessary, chasing loose balls, just like Nikita Kurbanov. Both players combined for 20 rebounds, that is a huge thing for the team, a huge contribution. Everybody did exactly what was necessary to win this game, with the performance we had. I cannot tell you details about our halftime meeting, but we watched details, what we had done wrong and right, because that second quarter we won 32-18 was the opposite that we did in the first quarter. Overall, we have beaten a very good team; the EuroLeague is not a walk in the park, especially for us, the reigning champion.
