The chance for others

Our team arrived to St. Petersburg today to take part in traditional preseason tournament – Kondrashin-Belov Cup which will take place on Saturday and Sunday. The games will be interesting to see for the CSKA fans because the team is missing four key players.

Only 11 out of 14 players from main team roster arrived to St. Petersburg and one of eleven – Andrey Vorontsevich – will not play in the tournament as he is still rehabilitating his injured shoulder. Victor Khryapa just arrived to Moscow after the surgery in Israel. Alexander Kaun will undergo MRI on Monday to check his injured knee. J R Holden was diagnosed with heart problems, so he went to Houston, USA to cardiology center for additional examinations. The club hopes to have the results soon.

Junior team players Denis Polokhin and Alexander Tikhonin were added to the roster for the tournament.

“The absences of the players are always giving a chance for other players to show themselves, - CSKA head coach Dusko Vujosevic said. In means of team play the absences are not a big problem for us as Kaun, Vorontsevich and Khryapa did not practice with us during the preseason. Possibly it will be even more difficult just after their return, because they will have to learn the plays and to use to the tempo of team actions. All the clubs came here with different level of preparation. For example, we played just two games and we’ll have heavy legs after intensive practices. Fortunately the result is not so important now. Surely, we will try to win but the losses are also useful sometimes. The tournament will be very useful, because the different teams with different styles came here to play. Maccabi plays different types of defense which will help us practice our offensive system. Besides the games in St. Petersburg will help us to prepare for the intensive period in the first part of the season, when we will play the tournament in Moscow, then two official games in Russia, then we will go for difficult American tour, then we will play two important Euroleague games.”