The first!
CSKA – Tsmoki Minsk: 101-54 (+47)
CSKA: Ware (13), Antonov (4), Clyburn (17 + 6 rb + 2 as + 2 st), Milutinov (13 + 8 rb), Shved (13 + 3 rb + 8 as + 2 bs + 5 to) – start; Khomenko (8 + 7 rb + 2 as), Freeman (18 + 3 rb + 2 as), Ukhov (3), Ivlev (5 + 3 rb + 3 as), Lopatin (2), Jerebko (5 + 6 rb), Kolesnikov (0)…
Tsmoki: Trostinetskiy (2), Hernandez-Zinenko (2 + 3 rb + 3 as + 5 pf), Belyankov (18 + 4 rb + 4 to + 4 pf), Koratsov (2 + 3 rb + 4 pf), Bliznyuk (14 + 4 as + 5 to) – start; Dudu (3 + 3 rb), Kosko (3 as), Stubeda (2 + 2 as), Vaskovtsev (2), Stabrovskiy (9)…
Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:
Nine victories and the first place in the regular season are not so important, they don't give you prizes. The performance at this stage is important, and the team deserves congratulations for it. We have a new start, in fact, we are having the second preseason, we are trying to integrate Allerik, Jonas, Casper, even Will, who missed a significant amount of time due to injury, into the system. We are very focused, both young players and veterans. Experienced guys like Nikita, Nikola, Alexey, Simon, others lead by example with their hard work. Thank you to the fans who came to support us today. Tomorrow we will find out the opponents in the first round and start preparing. We have a huge motivation to play even better. As for today's game, we started sloppy, we couldn't cope with the aggressive game of the Minsk team, with their isolations, we allowed 24 points in the first quarter. We had to adapt, make adjustments, and in the following three quarters we allowed only 30 points combined. Congratulations to the coach of the opponents, the final score clearly does not reflect the work done by the team.
