After Samara’s Gleb Goldyrev opened the score with a long-range shot, Loko began to exploit the size superiority of their front line: Aleksandr Gudumak made an alley-oop to Andrey Martyuk, then Antonius Cleveland to Gudumak. Samara, however, continued to lead, because first Mikhail Kulagin scored two 3-pointers in a row, and then (but no earlier than BJ Johnson scored 5 points, and Vladislav Yemchenko played another alley-oop with Kirill Yelatontsev) Egor Amosov made two successful long-shots in a minute – and the hosts went into the first break as leaders, 21:20.
At the beginning of the 2nd quarter, 5 points in a row by Yemchenko put Lokomotiv ahead, but soon an unfortunate episode occurred: Johnson tried to dunk – and roughly injured his shoulder. The forward was taken away from the court, and Samara, meanwhile, quickly scored three more 3-pointers and took the lead again, 31:30. Kulagin immediately added 2 more points in a fast break – luckily, Isaiah Whaley immediately made a block and then levelled the score from afar, 33:33.
Gudumak also scored from behind the 3-point line, and then Loko once again started to use their size advantage in the post: Cleveland and Whaley scored from under the hoop in a powerful manner, and Mikhail Vedishchev closed the quarter with two tough shots in a row, 49:40.
After the change of sides, Martyuk also decided to try his hand at long range – and also scored. A bit later, he scored with a dunk after a pass from Temirov – thus summing up the 9:0 run, 58:40. At this point, the Krasnodar team began to play freely and quite brightly – the great example of that was Yemchenko’s assist to Gudumak. Whaley scored again from afar, and immediately added 2+1, bringing the guests’ advantage to 25 points. By the end of the ten minutes, it grew even bigger, 74:47 – to the great joy of the single Loko fan in the stands of the Samara Sports Palace.
The Krasnodar team started the final quarter a bit lazily. In one of the episodes, Samara even took 3 rebounds in one attack. Miller did not allow the situation to become nervous: he broke away from his guardian under the ring and scored easy 2 points, then added another 2+1 – 81:54 five and a half minutes before the end. The Samara players scored a couple more 3-pointers, but Miller and Vedishchev with their shots did not allow the intrigue to flare up.
Lokomotiv-Kuban did what was expected from them in Samara – had won without any unnecessary stress. The next match is on Sunday, and oh what a battle it will be. We are playing in Moscow against CSKA!