Before this match, BC Samara was in a shake that you wouldn’t wish on anyone: after the governor drew attention to the club’s activities, contracts with three foreign players were urgently terminated – Brendan Adams, Ronnie Harrell and Nasir Brooks left. And the best Russian player according to stats – Mikhail Kulagin – was out with an injury earlier. So Viktor Kashin and Vladislav Karpov from Samara 3×3 had to be urgently transferred to the team.
Lokomotiv’s coaches decided to leave Antonius Cleveland and Mikhail Vedischev out of the roster.
As for the game itself, it started out as an equal fight: first, BJ Johnson and Ilya Popov scored in turn, then Anton Kardanakhishvili and Andrei Martyuk, who was led to the basket well by Patrick Miller time after time.
Samara defended selflessly, sometimes even desperately, that often led to fouls. And moments like Vladislav Yemchenko’s quick transition seemed to hint that Loko was just waiting for the moment to strangle the opponent mercilessly. So the score of 18:20 in favor of the hosts hardly caused any particular concern among Krasnodar fans.
At the beginning of the 2nd quarter, Kirill Yelatontsev and Yemchenko scored good shots, but soon Samara took the lead 23:29. At the same time, the opposing coach was forced to give Popov a rest, because the center received his third foul. In the absence of this player, Loko made an 11:2 run, taking the lead again for the first time since the 2nd minute – 34:31. Johnson scored 9 points in this segment – looked like he realized that all hope was now only on him, and clearly was okay with that. The quarter ended with a score of 36:39 in favor of Samara, but everything still looked as if Krasnodar could at any moment switch to a higher gear and take the game.
But what happened next, looked like Lokomotiv’s worst ten minutes since the ill-memorable defeat in Astana a year ago. Just 7 points in a quarter! The red-greens were unable to do anything in attack, and only Johnson occasionally brightened up the sad picture with another isolation. It was good that the Krasnodar team was more or less good in defense, otherwise they could have gone into the final break with a much sadder score than 43:52.
In the 4th quarter, Johnson finally started getting help from other players – Miller was the first to do so. And still, until the 36th (!) minute, Loko was only scoring from the free throw line, while Hayden Dalton and Alexander Gudumak were regularly restoring the gap with mid-range and long-range shots. Finally, Johnson broke the spell, Miller immediately scored 2 more, Yelatontsev joined in – and the game, which seemed to be hopelessly slipping away, suddenly crawled into the clutch. Then Popov left with too many fouls, and Gudumak – with an injury.
Karvel Anderson scored from outside the 3-point line and gave us a reason to truly believe in a miracle. It was –5 to play back, and Johnson once again made successful power move (after this attack, he had 29 points scored), and then Loko play good defense – and Karvel tied it!
But if anyone deserved a miracle that evening, it was Samara. Kardanakhishvili found a foul 4 seconds before the siren, scored one free throw out of two, and Miller’s shot from the center of the court flew wide.
Lokomotiv missed the chance to get closer to Zenit with CSKA. The next match is on Sunday in Yekaterinburg. The start is scheduled at 2 PM Moscow time.