The opening game of the European Championship against Ukraine was expected to be rather easy for Russian National team. But it turned out to be much more difficult than almost everybody thought:
Russia – Ukraine: 86-74
Our yesterday’s rivals didn’t pay too much attention to the well-known names from Russian team. So they managed to take a 10 point lead in the first quarter. And even when our players took initiative back, Ukrainians didn’t stop and continued to resist, in spite of the loss of Stanislav Medvedenko in the middle of the game. A “+12” advantage was secured by Russians only on the last seconds of the fourth quarter.
CSKA players didn’t show their best basketball yesterday, but it would be unfair to say that the game was a total failure for them. Alexey Savrasenko grabbed 3 offensive rebounds for only 4 first minutes, before he was suddenly put on bench, where he stayed till the end of game. Zakhar Pashutin(4 pt+4 reb) was good at defense and helped with the fast-breaks. And in the last quarter John Robert Holden (16 pt+4 as+3 reb) was unstoppable as he made 3 successful attempts behind the arc.
Our next opponent will be Italy, which had a very difficult game against Nowitzki’s Germany and gained an important victory only in the overtime.
Meanwhile Greece overcame France 64-50. Theodoros Papaloukas(2 pt) and Demos Dikoudis(6 pt+2 reb) had a considerable impact on this win
VTB Teams:
League&Tournament:
