CSKA vs. Khimki Moscow region: 79-68 (+11)
CSKA: De Colo (5), Antonov (5 + 3 rb + 4 pf), Rodriguez (7 + 4 st + 5 to), Vorontsevich (2), Clyburn (7 + 4 rb + 4 pf), Higgins (26 + 3 rb), Kurbanov (18 + 7 rb + 4 as + 2 bs), Hines (6 + 6 rb + 3 bs), Hunter (3 + 6 rb)…
Khimki: Shved (16 + 3 to + 4 pf), Honeycutt (10 + 5 rb + 4 as + 3 st), Vyaltsev (4 + 4 pf), Markovic (4 rb), Monya (5 + 2 bs), Gill (5 + 6 rb), Todorovic (13), Anderson (8), Jenkins (2), Thomas (5 + 3 rb)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
First of all, congratulations to the fans on the upcoming Christmas and New Year holidays. I wish them and their loved ones health and security. As for the game, our team deserved congratulations for the character, desire and, obviously, for the win. It was very important for us to bounce back after the loss, tough loss in the game where we had all chances to win. We also had to recover in short period and prepare to play against very good opponent, our traditional rival. We showed character and team spirit, we controlled the game for most of the time. Khimki came close to one point in the third quarter, they put the pressure, they used our unforced errors, and we had 6 of them in the period. Still we executed our plan, we contained their main creators and did not let them score 70 points. In this marathon it is important to collect victories. Also I would like to thank and congratulate 5 thousands fans who filled the gym tonight, they created great atmosphere. Unfortunately we couldn’t use Megasport because of holiday events, so we had to go down in our average numbers. I am sure that this kind of game would attract much bigger number of fans, so I invite everyone to come to our games in the future.
