Dynamo from St.Petersburg was second in the superleague table for almost three weeks. And this was the reason why the game atractted so much attention. Without any doubt the match became one of the hardest for CSKA in Superleague for a long time. And the level of the play could be compared to the Euroleague for sure. CSKA best scorer was J.R.Holden with 17 points, David Andersen and Theodoras Papaloukas added 15 each. Marcus Brown scored 12.
CSKA vs Dynamo St.Petersburg: 86-78
CSKA started the game in an unusual way. This time the Army club did not give the opponent an opportunity to become the leader after the very first minutes of the game. But it did not change the usual scenery of the play. CSKA did a poor job in the defence in the first half and Dynamo was ahead by 14 points with 1.23 to go in the first half.
In the middle of the third quarter CSKA made an impressive 16-0 run that changed the game completely. The hero of the moment was J.R.Holden who made 4 threepointers in just a minute and a half. CSKA focused on the defence. But Dynamo did not give up. The guests from St.Petersburg managed to freeze the gap on the “-2” mark. But in the final minute Dynamo was just unlucky. With 40 seconds to go when the score was 81-78 the team left Theodoras Papaloukas alone at the 6-meters line and the Greek guard used his chance. With 7 seconds to go David Andersen set the score on the 86-78 mark.
With the loss Dynamo felt on the 4th position in the Superleague. Now the runner up in the championship is Dynamo from Moscow. CSKA is going to meet the team next week.
The head coach of CSKA Dusan Ivkovic:
- Today it was one really good game. We played absolutely different two halfs. Before the big rest our defense was the worsest this season. In the first half we let Dynamo to score 50 easy points (67% of 2-pointers and 43% of 3-pointers). Our main problem was our defence one-to-one. After 20 minutes we lost 10 points.
In the rest our players understood the situation and we could find the solution. We won the second half by 18 points. It was the last game in November. Before the end of the year we have to play several serious games. We need to teach right lessons from this game. Tomorrow we continue our practices to the game against Pau-Orthez.
The head coach of Dynamo Spb David Blatt:
The most part of the game we have shown good basketball and were leading. Some moments we were better but CSKA is a very experienced team. As I said tomorrow CSKA is a great team with the great coach. Our bench is not so long, and we could not show good game for all 40 minutes. Our newcomer Davud Blutental could not participate in the game because of the high temperature.
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