First trophy received!

Moscow Army team won the first trophy in this season by beating UNICS Kazan in Russian Cup Final Four. Losing 11 point during the first quarter, CSKA could return and won by 15 points.

CSKA vs UNICS: 96-81

UNICS started the game playing well in the defense under the boards. CSKA could not get in the game long enough for the rival to lead 12-23. But in the second quarter the Army club changed the rhythm of the game and made it faster. The decision brought the result almost immediately. 11 points difference disappeared in just 2 minutes and a half. The final score of the quarter was even more impressive 30-13.

But UNICS did not give up and came back in the 3rd quarter – 57-56. Only Theodoros Papaloukas effort and an important 3-pointer of J.R. Holden helped CSKA to survive – 71-60. UNICS seemed to be too nervous in the key quarter of the game. With 6 minutes to go in the game the head coach of the team Stanislav Eremin was ejected from the bench with 2 technical fouls. 5 free throws and one 3-pointer in just 10 seconds helped CSKA to climb high enough not to let UNICS come back – 86-70 and 96-81 in total.

Martin Muursepp and J.R. Holden shared the title of the best scorer in the team. Both reached 17 points mark. Marcus Brown added 15 and the CSKA captain Sergey Panov scored 12.

The head coach of CSKA Dusan Ivkovic:

CSKA deserved to become the Russian Cup holder. We were better than UNIСS tonight although our team was not on a such psychological level as I expect it to be. CSKA did not control the game in the first quarter. The team scored only 14 points, the rival played better and scored 23. Martin Muursepp was the player who helped us to survive in this moment. We changed the situation in the 2nd quarter and started to control the game.

The first trophy this season should help our players psychologically. It is a great pleasure that we don’t have injured players in the roster, despite the fact Papaloukas goes on wearing the mask. By the way tonight he played better than yesterday.

We are looking forward to play in the Russian championship playoffs that would start the next week. So we have a lot of job to do in the upcoming days.


The head coach of UNICS Stanislav Eremin:

- I would like to congratulate CSKA with the victory the team deserves. But I think that such a strong team does not need some extra support. I can only blame myself that I could not stop in the key moment and received two technical fouls but I tried to defend my players.

The game showed that CSKA is not a team one can not stand against. When UNIСS played concentrated the game was even. But when the guys played selfish CSKA received the advantage. We could not stop Martin Muursepp in the beginning. We let the rival to control the game in the 2nd quarter because of poor organization in the offence.

I did my best to find a balance between the offence and the defence, but the bench players unfortunately did not make out performance any stronger.