The Loko guard spoke about his feelings after the game with Zenit (86:91).
- – What are your emotions at the moment?
- – Oh, kots of. Games like this are the beauty of basketball. I don’t want to say anything bad about football, but there you may not see a single goal scored in 90 minutes. On the other side, we had everything today: passions, even some brawls. I think we gave the fans a good game. Of course, it's better to celebrate the victory, but things happen.
- – What exactly wasn't enough to win?
- – Details. As I always say, it's the details that matter. In the clutch, everything was in our hands, we were leading by 3 points, but then we got an offensive foul, and immediately a technical one. Zenit took 3 points from the penalty line, making the score equal. Then we got another offensive foul... And if someone somewhere had done everything differently, the score could have been in our favor. The main conclusion from this is: in game with teams like Zenit, you cannot bring things to a clutch where everything can be decided by one episode. We need to make a bigger margin.
- – Was it hard to catch up Zenit for most of the match?
- – Well, we are no strangers to this role. Both last season and this season, we too often had to catch up with our opponents. So we have proven more than once that a 10-point gap, like today, is not a tragedy for us. Attack after attack, defense after defense, we know how outrun any opponent.
- – Why were there so many technical fouls today?
- – Because of emotions. We know very well that we must always restrain them. But in the moment it's difficult to do this. Once you don’t agree with the referee’s decision, then someone points a finger towards you, and you get emotional. Of course, we cannot afford this. We need to control ourselves and not give the referees reasons to issue technical fouls. They whistled? Okay, you calmly walk away. We will continue to work on this.
- – Zenit goes through the 2nd stage with very impressive numbers – 8 wins in 9 games. How strong do they feel when you play against them?
- – I said at the beginning of the season that their roster makes them of the strongest teams in the league. At that time they were still looking for their game, but now they have found it, and their results show it. So we must not forget that we had a great chance of winning against such an opponent. We will work on our mistakes and continue to improve our game. And I am sure that victories will come to us.
- – Who is harder to play against – Thomas Heurtel or Trent Frazier?
- – They are different. Frazier is very fast, it’s difficult to play one-on-one against him: if you step back from him, he shoots with a high percentage; if you get too close, he’ll dribble past you. Heurtel creates more for his partners and plays for the team. If we talk about one game, then I would say that it is more difficult with Frazier, if we talk about a series of games – with Heurtel.
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