Loko started hard: BJ Johnson scored from afar, Patrick Miller dunked, Vsevolod Ishchenko made a mid-range shot in, 7:0.
UNICS was able to respond only in the 6th minute – Louis Labeyrie lit 8:2 on the scoreboard. The Kazan team percentage was poor at that moment, and they were visibly losing their confidence. This statistic was slightly corrected by DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell, who scored twice in a row (the stands greeted his appearance with noise of unclear emotion). Jalen Reynolds added 3 more points – and now it was 11:9.
The visitors run was stopped by Johnson, who literally broke through Akoon-Purcell. And 6 points in a row by Vladislav Yemchenko (including a three-point buzzer) set quite a promising score of the 1st quarter – 20:13.
At the very beginning of the next period, Tony Taylor, UNICS’s main point guard, received his third foul. Then, in two episodes in a row, Lokomotiv defended not only successfully, but also spectacularly – and with the score 26:15, Velimir Perasović took a timeout.
This helped the guests partly: they started to score some points, but the Krasnodar team also became more aggressive. In one episode, the hosts took 3 rebounds in a row in the attack until Anton Kvitkovskikh finally sent the ball into the hoop.
Twice in a short interval, Lokomotiv players managed to score 2+1: first Antonius Cleveland did it, then Miller. And when Miller ran into 1-to-0 counterattack once again, the UNICS staff took their second timeout – 36:23.
The remaining 3 minutes of the quarter included a spectacular putback by Johnson and a mini-run by UNICS, which reduced the gap to 10 points. But Kirill Yelatontsev from the free-throw line returned the score to “+11” by the big break, 40:29.
In the first two and a half minutes of the 3rd quarter, the red-greens scored more three-pointers than in the entire first half: Kvitkovskikh did it twice, Johnson added one more. UNICS managed to stay at the same 11-point distance, and with the score at 50:39, Andrey Vedishchev took a timeout. Nevertheless, the visitors continued the chase and reduced the distance to 7 points. But then Cleveland stepped in, brilliantly finishing two attacks in a row – 54:43.
A little later, in the episode in which Yelatontsev scored, Taylor was left lying on the parquet and then limped to the bench. Cleveland ended the quarter with a spectacular dunk, which brought a good half of the 5,020 spectators in the Basket Hall to their feet – 58:46.
Loko started the fourth quarter on a wave of courage: Yemchenko hit a great shot from mid-range, and Johnson from long range, 63:46. After another spectacular shot from Cleveland, Taylor, who was brought back to life by UNICS doctors, scored his first points this evening (from behind the 3-point line). But Kvitkovskikh continued to score and score from any distance – 71:53 with 4 minutes left!
All the remaining attempts of UNICS to return to the game were stopped confidently and clearly: Miller and Cleveland scored at the most necessary moments. The final minutes were accompanied by the joyful chanting of the stands. UNICS turned “–15” into “–7” when it could not change the overall outcome.
Now Loko is going to two away games: on October 24, the Krasnodar team will play against Pari NN, and on the 27th – against CSKA.
The next home game is scheduled on November 3; Zenit will come to Krasnodar. We are waiting for you at Basket Hall that day!