СSKA is in the Euroleague Finals!

CSKA Moscow won the semifinal game versus Unicaja 62-50 on Friday night at OAKA in Athens. The win means the second in a row appearance of the Army club in the Euroleague finals.

CSKA – Unicaja (Spain): 62-50

Ettore Messina, CSKA head coach:

- We all have to congratulate Unicaja for their aggressiveness and toughness and the heart they put in the game. I was sure it would be the toughest game for us for two reasons. First, the loss of Santiago caused a sense of mind that we must win by a big margin. We tried a lot to convince our players that we just need to win the game, and to isolate them from all the comments around. Second, They have, especially in the front line, a quickness we don't have. We are a powerful team, we can post well, but they are quicker than us. Every time we didn't move the ball well, our offense stopped and we took bad shots. We won the game because of great defense... We played with great confidence in the last minutes when everybody thought Unicaja was going to win. Everybody wrote that Unicaja has a chance if they enter the last minutes in a close margin, but after they took the lead early in the last quarter, we reacted well.

Now we're going to play the finals on Sunday and we'll play against a team with much more offensive tools than us, no matter which one will qualify. We'd like to relax a little bit and then start to think about the finals tonight. The last two-three weeks, Theo tried to do everything. I was very concerned about him playing here and not having the patience to let the game come to him, but he's a first-level player. I'm very happy because one more time my team is in the finals. When you go to Final Four you always think how horrible it will be to prepare for the 3rd place game. I'm always scared what will I do if it happens, so I'm very happy to be in the finals.