What a start!

CSKA vs. Astana: 103-58 (+45)

CSKA: De Colo (17 + 4 as + 4 st), Teodosic (9 + 3 to), Jackson (3 + 4 rb + 7 as), Markoishvili (15), Korobkov (4), Weems (5 + 4 rb + 4 as), Zozulin (9), Strebkov (3), Vorontsevich (7 + 7 rb + 4 as), Kaun (14 + 6 rb), Khryapa (15 + 5 rb + 3 st), Hines (2)…

Astana: Johnson (17 + 5 rb + 7 as + 7 to), Mahalbasic (8 + 10 rb + 4 to), Ilin (7 + 3 rb + 4 to), Ponomarev (15 + 4 rb), Klimov (5), Marchuk (2), Kolesnikov (4 + 5 rb)…

Congratulations to my team. We are up 1-0. It was pretty obvious that we had two different pictures in the first and second half, above all, on defense. We played pretty well before halftime. Our opponent made some tough shots, but we talked during the halftime about how we needed to play better defense. In the end, we only gave up 16 points in the half. We should mention that Astana was playing without four key players, though we also were missing three important players – Fridzon, Kirilenko and Nichols. The team still played very serious.