Lokomotiv-Kuban – Runa – 89:86 (17:27, 29:16, 23:18, 20:25).
L: Barford (17), Kvitkovskikh (17), Martyuk (12+14 rebounds), Emchenko (10), Vedishchev (6), Sychkov (5), Uzinsky (5), Kalinov (5), Dolinin (5), Yelatontsev (3), Shcherbenev (2), Paunich (2).
R: Karpenko (22).
The start of the match for Krasnodar absolutely did not work out. After a three-pointer by the team’s rookie forward Dmitry Uzinsky reached the goal, they scored almost nothing for several minutes. The interim result was 6:21, and the head coach’s assistants Roman Semerninov and Yuritsa Zhuzhe had to urgently find the right and necessary parting words for the wards in the timeout.
It worked. By the end of the quarter, Loko reduced the gap, and in the second period – regained balance and came forward. It is noteworthy that by the big break, all 12 basketball players included in the application scored points.
After the resumption of the game, the Krasnodar team did not slow down and soon brought their advantage to double digits. Defender Jaylen Barford predictably assumed the main responsibility for scoring points (having clearly maintained the “effective score per minute” schedule throughout the game), and forward Andrey Martyuk collected rebounds like an experienced mushroom picker (14 in total).
In the closing minutes, the Krasnodar team slightly lost concentration and made several losses. The last of them, 17 seconds before the siren, was converted by the captain of Runa, Fedor Klyuchnikov, into a three–pointer with a foul – only 89:86 in favor of Loko. However, the rivals failed to achieve more.