The game started with a block by Andrei Martyuk to Egor Sychkov and two points by Kirill Temirov. Soon Martyuk scored with a pass from Alexander Gudumak. But Avtodor, which sported quite an unusual and beautiful uniform, scored three-pointers well and took the lead, 8:4.
Vladislav Yemchenko responded to Bryant Crawford’s 5 points in a row with the same number (making this, our player surpassed his personal 1000-point mark in the VTB United League). And after Martyuk scored from under the hoop, Isaiah Whaley blocked Charles Manning, and Yemchenko scored 2 more, the numbers on the scoreboard became even – 15:15. The Saratov team again ran 5 points away, but Whaley scored 2+1, and the teams went into the first break with the score 22:20 in favor of Avtodor.
When the game resumed, Whaley tied it, but until the middle of the 2nd quarter, this remained Loko’s only points. The next time we managed to score was already at 22:28 ‒ Antonius Cleveland did it. Passions had already run high by this point, and after the referees recorded Cleveland’s run, the head coach of Lokomotiv quickly received two technical fouls for disagreeing with this decision and was sent off the court. Manning and Jamal Jones brought the Saratov team’s advantage to 24:32 following this episode. And soon it became 26:35.
But then Lokomotiv got really involved and turned up the heat. Cleveland put the ball back to the basket after his own miss, Miller managed to score a floater through a thickness of hands, and Yemchenko summed up the return dash with a buzzer from zero angle ‒ 34:39.
After the side switch, Lokomotiv forced Crawford to make two mistakes in a row – first by catching him on an offensive foul, and then by luring him under Whaley’s block. This allowed Miller to tie the score with a long-range shot, 43:43. Then came Cleveland’s three minutes of glory: he put Lokomotiv ahead, and then time after time returned the lead, as soon as Avtodor tied it. When Whaley also got involved, the difference in the score grew to “+4”, and then to “+7”. The Krasnodar team won the third quarter with a score of 25:14, and in total the scoreboard showed 59:53 in our favor.
Lokomotiv’s pressure did not weaken, and before the end of the 31st minute, the gap became double-digit. And in the 33rd minute, the Krasnodar team performed another fine run: a dunk by Dmitry Uzinsky, a slalom by Miller, an interception by Cleveland – and after a dunk by Miller, it was already 70:55 for Loko!
Immediately, Martyuk from beyond the arc seemed to knock Avtodor down, but the opponent won back 6 points quite quickly, 73:61. After a timeout taken by the Lokomotiv coaches, long-range shots by Anton Kvitkovskikh and John Jenkins came in very handy – 81:63, the maximum advantage this evening! In the remaining 3 minutes, the youngest players of the Krasnodar roster received playing time, as well as Jenkins, who was keeping improving his understanding with the teammates.
Now, Loko returns to Krasnodar, where they will play the final 4 games of the regular season. The first of them is on Wednesday, April 2, against Astana. See you at the Basket Hall!
PS: We thank the employees of the Volga Railway, the branch of Russian Railways in Saratov, who supported our team in the stands of Kristall!
