CSKA played the last game of the Sibirian tour against Universitet from Surgut. The Army club so far became the leader of the league with three games played, most of the teams played only two.
The hall where Surgut would play some games of the championship is a very small one. Just 7 stands of 7 row each. And off course all the places for the game were taken a long before the start of the game.
Universitet - CSKA: 76-94
Nikita Shabalkin made the starting five for the first time this season. He replaced Matjaz Smodis. There were no other changes – Holden, Langdon, Pashutin and Andersen were the in the line-up that stepped on the court first.
In Novosibirsk the first points in the game were scored with 7.15 to go in the first quarter. In this game the score 6-5 was on the table by the time. The hosts succeed even more. In the middle of the period they were ahead 11-7. But then CSKA started to feel the rhythm of the game, showed some good defensive performance but that was enough only to reach 19-22 mark by the end of the quarter.
Universitet was still in the mood for fighting in the second quarter. But mostly it was CSKA fault that the team could not avoid the huge number of mistakes mostly in the defense. CSKA hardly made ‘+10’ with 2.30 to go in the first half. But was not able to keep it until the half time break – 42-35.
The second half reminded the first. CSKA leaded by 10 some points all the way. But the mistakes or sometimes good performance of the rivals did not let the team to have bigger gap or fully control the game. Only in the very end of the game when Universitet was ready to celebrate the loss with the smallest margin ever CSKA finally had the 11-6 serie that helped the team to finish the game with the score 94-76.
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