CSKA European schedule make the team to fly to Istanbul today, on an Orthodox Christmas Eve. Tomorrow CSKA will play against Efes Pilsen in Round 9 of the Euroleague regular season.
The team flew to Turkish capitol by Aeroflot regular flight unusually early. Players, coaches and staff had to shorten their sleeping time to be on time in the plane scheduled to depart at 10.45. Even though the flight was delayed for almost an hour, CSKA stayed within the plan for the visit. The team was in the hotel just in time for the lunch and in the evening it will have the practice on the Abdi Ipekci Arena. Also the team will have one more practice on a game day morning.
12 players flew to Istanbul. Alexey Shved and injured Artem Zabelin were left in Moscow.
Ettore Messina:
"Probably we played one of our best games defeating Efes Pilsen at home, but at that time, Efes was just a different team. Now they are playing together for a longer time and they have two good wins – against Milano and Panionios – which kept them on the track for getting to the Top 16. We should not hope that we will shoot with the same percentage as we did at home, so we have to rely on defense and rebounding as we usually do. After a long break we had eight days of good practices, so we hope to show our best game in Istanbul."
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