At the very beginning, Lokomotiv did not give Avtodor even a chance to shoot, but the hosts either could not hit the target, even from the free throw line, so for some time the scoreboard showed 1:0. Then Dmitry Khaldeev and Bryant Crawford quickly scored 9 points for the Saratov team, to which the red-greens responded with two shots by Andrey Martyuk: at first, he grabbed an offensive rebound and made it to the hoop, then tried to score from behind the arc, missed, received a pass from Kirill Temirov and did what is usually expected from centers – a dunk, and 9:9 on the scoreboard.
It seemed that the first quarter would not be fruitful, but with 11:11 on the board, Avtodor scored 4 points in a row, and Antonius Cleveland managed to equalize in two episodes – 15:15 by the first break, 15:15.
After the game resumed, Cleveland and Martyuk continued to score, but Avtodor managed to tie each time, and after a 3-pointer by Yegor Sychkov they even took the lead, 22:23.
Temirov joined the game in a great way: he scored a mid-range shot, forced an opponent to make an offensive foul, which was right away followed by a long-range shot by Patrick Miller – 27:23. BJ Johnson scored a great mid-range one after a fake move, but the Saratov team clung to their opponents tightly – they quickly caught up, and by the end of the quarter the leader managed to change 8 more times! Still, Lokomotiv was ahead by the big break – 35:34.
Martyuk, Miller, Johnson and Dmitry Uzinsky at the start of the 3rd quarter provided the home team with a good lead – 48:39. Dušan Beslać immediately scored a three-pointer. But Loko began to respond to each subsequent effective attack of Avtodor with their own: Cleveland dunked after a pass from Martyuk, Miller scored from under the hoop, Johnson – from afar. This allowed the hosts to go into the third break with the score 59:51 in their favor.
Two more points by Cleveland and a dunk by Kirill Yelatontsev made the Krasnodar team’s advantage double-digit at the start of the 4th period – 63:51. Caleb Agada made it back to “+9”. But then Cleveland and Johnson almost executed an alley-oop (B.J. scored not from above, but with a light volleyball touch). Cleveland immediately made another steal, giving Johnson very enough time to score. And then Miller ran to the unprotected hoop and dunked to bring the gap to 20 points – 76:56 with 4.5 minutes left.
Lokomotiv was not going to let such an advantage slip away. Both teams finished the match with purely Russian fives (although Milenko Bogičević did release Crawford at some point), giving the 3,837 spectators a few more spectacular moments: a defensive hustle by Anton Kvitkovskikh and Vsevolod Ishchenko, dunks by Dmitry Khaldeev and Alexander Petenev (which one, we must admit, was especially cool).
The VTB United League is now going to a two-week break. Lokomotiv Kuban will play their next game in Kazan on December 1. And the next home one is scheduled on the 18th, against MBA-MAI.