I knew it would be a tough match, and I'm glad we won. We played against a very organized opponent. Samara has been showing good team play in both defense and offense in recent matches.
Throughout the game, I kept saying that we should be more focused on rebounds, ball movement, pick-and-rolls - and to defend as we planned. The team needed to focus and play tougher. Only in the 4th quarter, we turned the tide of the match and finally played the way we should have from the very start.
After the game with Zenit, we faced serious problems in the lineup: Karvel Anderson was injured broke his finger. Then Kirill Yelatontsev was injured during training, and he was unable to prepare properly: he went out to play under injections, and it was obvious that he was not in 100% playing condition.
Now the team will rest. A recovery training session is scheduled for tomorrow, we will watch today's game, analyze the mistakes, of which there were many. We played bad in the posts, made 20 turnovers – that's too much. But every game is a new story. So in the coming days we will decide how we will play against Uralmash.
Congratulations to our fan sector on the anniversary of its foundation. Your support is very important to us. When the atmosphere at the match is like today, it motivates us to go forward.
