Loko newcomer Aleksandr Gudumak began the game in the starting five. Kirill Temirov opened the scoring, but then Zenit, to the delight of the packed stands of their arena, made a 7:0 run. Thanks to the efforts of Patrick Miller and Antonius Cleveland, the Krasnodar team evened out the game. And then Vladislav Yemchenko came out on the court and managed to score 12 points by the end of the quarter, shooting without a miss: from mid-range, from under the hoop, from behind the 3-point line and from the free throw line. This did not allow Zenit to run away far at the end of the first period – 28:30.
The second quarter had barely begun when Dmitry Uzinsky scored 5 points in a row. And as soon as Zenit took the lead again, Temirov tied the score with a long-range shot, and soon Uzinsky put another 3-pointer on target. A tough fight began, in which the Lokomotiv players felt fine: Miller scored with a foul, Gudumak made his first points for the new club. By the big break, our guys were ahead – 51:46.
The next quarter began with Loko quickly making 11:0 run. Seven of these points were scored by Andrey Martyuk (including a 3-pointer). Zenit managed to score only 3 in the first 7 minutes of the second half, and as soon as the hosts started scoring a little, Yemchenko brightly came off the bench again, scored from mid-range, made an assist to Uzinsky – 83:61 by the end of the period!
Zenit tried to outrun the 22-point deficit from the very beginning of the 4th quarter – Xavier Moon and Alexander Shcherbenev made an 8:0 run. But Gudumak scored 2+1, Miller made a perfect fadeaway shot, Uzinsky hit the target from afar – and again “+19”! A very high-tempo game began. Three minutes before the end, Lokomotiv’s advantage shranked to 11 points, but Cleveland and Yemchenko managed to extinguish this burst.
Both teams scored a total of 71 points in the 4th quarter. Also, Lokomotiv Kuban has never scored 117 in an away game. The previous record was 114 points (this happened twice: away to Zielona Góra in the VTB United League on October 25, 2020 and away to Antwerp in the EuroCup on November 4, 2020).
Lokomotiv Kuban will play their next game on January 14 in Samara against the basketball club of the same name. After that, on January 19, they will play in Moscow against the championship leader, CSKA. Next time the red-greens will play at home is scheduled on January 25. The opponent will be Yenisei.