Last two CSKA-Tau match up happened to be in the Top 16 and were one of the toughest games of the season for the Moscovites. Both of the games in Moscow (in 2001-2002 and 2003-2004 seasons) were nervous as the winner of the games would have got the place in the Final Four. Probably these two games are the reason for the club from Vitoria to become a “special guest” in Moscow and to expect an outstanding game.
CSKA vs Tau Ceramica: 88-83
For CSKA the match became outstanding for sure. For several years the team did not play such a fast basketball. Tau surprized the Army club with its speed from the very beginning. It took the Spanish club just two minutes to make a 7-0 run. CSKA hardly got used to the rhythm and it took the team almost 10 minutes to even the score – 27-27 in the beginning of the second quarter. But another portion of Tau fast breaks and Luis Scola individual performance helped Tau to make a run again – 41-47 after the end of the first half.
CSKA tried to slow down the rivals in the beginning of the 3rd quarter. It cost the team four early fouls but helped to start controlling the game. As soon as Theodoros Papaloukas managed to help CSKA to organize the team game the fortune started to turn its face to the Moscovites side. The key moment was Papaloukas 3-pointer with 4 minutes to go that finished a 15-5 run of CSKA and set the score on the 81-70 mark. Tau players did their best to make a come back late in the game but did not succeed.
CSKA became a leader in the group C. The best CSKA scorer was Marcus Brown with 23 points, Dimos Dikoudis added 19, Theodoras Papaloukas helped his team with 14 points. For Tau the two leaders were Luis Scola (22 points and 13 rebounds) and Arvidas Macijauskas who finished the game with the game high 26 points.
The head coach of CSKA Dusan Ivkovic:
It was one really great and very tough game. But I think that we absolutely deserved this victory. From this game we need to teach many things. First of all our defense in the first half was very bad. They surprised us by the game one-to-one. They scored 15 points in first 4 minutes, it is very high percentage. In the second quarter we could adapted and win by 3. But our organization of game in offense was very bad and we let Tau to score to many easy points.
I want to congratulate my players for their patient. When we took an advantage by 66-65 that moment we took the control in the game. Everybody knows that Tau Ceramica . When we prepared to this game we thought how to stop Scola and Macijauskas, but they are really the best part of Spanish team.
The head coach of Tau Ceramica Dusko Ivanovic declined to go the press-conference due to the bad English.
VTB Teams:
League&Tournament:
