Home game versus Lottomatica Rome which opens 2009-10 Euroleague season for CSKA fans will not feature Trajan Langdon – the hero of previous meeting of the teams in Moscow.
CSKA guard has no more flu symptoms already and will pass medical examination on Wednesday for doctors to decide if he will return to team practices. But he will definitely miss the game. Thus Trajan will miss Euroleague game for the first time in his four+ seasons with CSKA. His series of consecutive Euroleague games for CSKA will be broken on 96, including the game against Lottomatica on February 2008 won by Langdon 10-meter three-pointer. Taking into consideration Langdon’s play for the other teams the series reached 131. The last time he had to stay away from the game happened in 2002-03 season with Benetton. At the same time Andrey Vorontsevich is likely to step on the floor as he returned to practices on Monday.
Club from Rome also misses a couple of players: Luca Vitali and Luigi Datome did not travel to Moscow. But Lottomatica defeated Caja Laboral in Euroleague 1st round even without those players.
“Lottomatica changed its roster seriously during the preseason, - CSKA head coach Evgeny Pashutin said. But the first games showed that the team has character and is able to play organized basketball. The team’s game revolves around Hutson, Jaaber and Winston. So our task is to play good defense, stop these players and not let Lottomatica play its aggressive, fast basketball. It is important for us to have a better rotation. Vorontsevich started to practice on Monday and Langdon is still passing medical tests, but I hope both will be able to help us on Wednesday.”
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