CSKA vs. Baskonia Vitoria Gasteiz: 84-82 (+2)
CSKA: De Colo (10 + 3 to + 5 pf), Teodosic (16 + 8 as), Augustine (9 + 5 rb), Fridzon (8 + 3 to), Jackson (7 + 6 as), Vorontsevich (2 + 5 rb), Higgins (8), Khryapa (6 + 6 rb + 3 to), Kurbanov (8 + 3 rb), Hines (10 + 3 rb)…
Baskonia: Larkin (8 + 8 as + 3 to), Voigtmann (10 + 6 rb), Hanga (6 + 5 pf), Beaubois (21 + 5 as + 3 to), Blazic (2), Diop (7 + 3 rb), Tillie (10 + 9 rb + 3 to + 5 pf), Laprovittola (3 + 4 as), Shengelia (3 + 3 to), Budinger (12 + 6 rb)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
Congratulations to my players for leading 2-0. 2-0 is 2-0. It doesn’t give you the qualification, but it gives you a good start. This is what we were supposed to do, defend our home-court advantage and take the two victories. Regarding the game, we had very good control, even though the first half was equal. Baskonia led by 2, but we had, if I am not mistaken, a 9-2 run at the end of the first half and took the advantage by 5. And we opened the third quarter, even though it was only plus-6 for us, we played pretty good defense and were more consistent defensively. They made some big shots. Baskonia on the road, I would say has the same values of last year’s playoff with [Crvena] Zvezda, they shoot the ball pretty well – better than us – from the perimeter. They made 11 three-pointers in Game 1 and 12 three-pointers in Game 2. Most of them were contested and well defended. But we took the lead plus [17] and some were there when the second unit came off the bench to try their last options. … We came to the clutch moments, unfortunately on that last play, Cory [Higgins] slipped, actually he was pushed by the effort of Teodosic to switch on defense and he lost and that’s why Beaubois made that open look. But then we had a big play with Teo attacking on the block and Kyle grabbed that rebound and made the winning play. Definitely we have to work on press situations, but as I said there are a lot of details we can talk about as a team from the film. We know it will be a tough mission in Vitoria, but we have the character, we have the wish, we have the players to go there and qualify for the Final Four in Spain.
