Convincing. But that’s only a beginning

Our team, as it was planned, made the opponents play our style of game in the first meeting of the Euroleague quarterfinals series. CSKA style appeared to be absolutely indigestible for Caja Laboral and that led to the solid win by red-blues.

CSKA vs. Caja Laboral: 86-63


Evgeny Pashutin, CSKA head coach:

"It is very important to win the first game as it sets the tone for the whole series. We’d like to extrapolate the success to all the series. We demonstrated great defense, stopped Caja Laboral’s fast game and even though we had a lot of fouls, we showed excellent offensive balance and timing and created open shots for our shooters. We tried to put the reserves in the game slowly because it is important to let our leaders feel the rhythm. All our thoughts are about the second game right now. We remember that Splitter, who did not show his best today, is able to surprise us. Still I am satisfied with Vorontsevich’s defense on Splitter, though I do not want to single Andrey out; all the team helped him."