Turkish hell is under construction

Turkish hell is under construction. In case it is full Abdi Ipekci sports hall is worth only this kind of definitions. But this time the sectors close to the roof were closed with the grey screens and it looked like the arena capacity dropped for almost a half. It is a kind of tradition for Ulker to invite school classes and to make a kind of fan contest between them at the games against CSKA. This one was not an exception.

Ulker - CSKA: 49-82

Ulker started the game putting the zone defense on CSKA. That was not a good idea as Sergey Panov and Trajan Langdon easily passed it through – 6-2. On the Ulker side the player who scored all but two points by the middle of the quarter was Mirsad Turkcan. CSKA found a way to defend against the former player only by the end of the first period. With the help of Matjaz Smodis. But Ulker had nothing to do but to pass the ball to Turkcan in the offence anyway. No one else including Stefanov and Kutluay wanted to take the responsibility. The result of the first quarter was a logical one – 20-12 in CSKA favor and Turkcan who achieved 8 points on Ulker side.

The host shooters woke up just right after the first break. Two threpointers by Stefanov and Kutluay cut down the deficit to 20-18. But the other players did not pay much attention to the fact that the guards need a good position to shoot. The team was simply unable to give them such an opportunity. On the other end CSKA showed why the head coach of the team Ettore Messina was the right person to give lectures on the theme ‘Passing’ in the off season. The team moved the ball well and by the half time break there was no question on the leader 44-24.

After the break Ulker did the team’s best to play faster. CSKA clearly expected the move but the Turkish still got to the score marks 29-46 and 31-48. But that was the last good thing that happened to Ulker in the game. After that there was no questions at all about the winner. The last quarter was interesting only from the stats point of view.

Ettore Messina CSKA head coach

- Obviously we are happy for this win. First of all I want to thank our fans who came up here and supported us great. I think we played excellent defense again and on offense we had a season high of 22 assists that shows how we play together. Everybody contributed. Even the players from the bench we focused on the game and we ready to play. Now we have positive record in the Euroleague and we must continue like this. We have a different situation than last month and this is our motivation to keep on working.