Lokomotiv Kuban vs. CSKA: 74-68
Jonas Kazlauskas, CSKA head coach:
My congratulations to Lokomotiv and my friend Kestutis Kemzura with good game and coaching work. I don’t want to seek for excuses and to talk that I am a new man here and we have a lot of problems. Because if we did not have problems, I would not be here. But, sincerely, I did not expect to have them that many. No time to cry, we should work. First, we are in bad physical conditions. After good start we lost our breath and started to walk. For instance, we had 5 turnovers in the first quarter but the opponents scored just 9 points. That tells us that we understand defensive principles but don’t have enough power to hold on to one level. Second, I have to use to the players to help them more during the games. We do not have mutual understanding yet and it takes too much time to explain something. Sometimes we made such a stupid mistakes that I doubted that I see experienced CSKA team on the floor not the other team with worse level. We lost on rebounds though we are taller, and there are no excuses for that. In the middle of the game we stopped executing the plays I introduced and simplified our game, but it was easier for the opponent to read. With me as a head coach Langdon had just three practices after illness. Khryapa is already practices with the team but we together with doctors decided to keep him on the bench in such a difficult game. We will wait for a better chance.
