Gran Canaria Las Palmas vs. CSKA: 91-106 (+15)
Gran Canaria: Hannah (17 + 6 as + 2 st + 3 to), Baez (6), Pasecniks (9 + 3 rb), Evans (14 + 4 pf), Strawberry (16) – start; Oliver (3 + 3 as + 4 pf), Eriksson (2 as), Balvin (8), Pauli (8 + 3 rb + 4 to), Rabaseda (7 + 2 st), Fischer (DNP), Tillie (3 + 4 rb + 3 to)…
CSKA: De Colo (22 + 6 as + 4 st + 3 to), Antonov (2 + 5 rb), Clyburn (15 + 8 rb), Hackett (3 to), Hunter (16 + 6 rb) – start; Peters (15 + 5 rb + 2 st + 4 pf), Ukhov (0), Rodriguez (11 + 5 rb + 8 as), Vorontsevich (DNP), Higgins (17 + 4 as + 2 st + 3 to + 4 pf), Kulagin (DNP), Hines (8)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
I would like to congratulate my team and my players for the outcome, for the win. I also want to congratulate Gran Canaria for their fight and their crowd. I think that everybody witnessed two different halves from my team. In the first half, we lacked concentration, motivation and aggression on the defensive end. We allowed them to do a lot of easy things. They were playing aggressive basketball. Then came the second half, in which the mindset was changed and I have to congratulate my players for that. We had a great defensive second half. We challenged shots, contested the opponent and didn’t give them second chances. We forced turnovers and shared the ball well with 16 assists despite not moving the ball that much in the first half. We managed to bring that to the end with a lot of quality and it is another lesson: there are no easy games, especially on the road. Gran Canaria had character, they wanted to react and played aggressive basketball so congratulations to them. I wish them the best of luck.
