The long-awaited Kirill Yelatontsev and Aleksandr Gudumak were back in the Krasnodar team’s roster. On the other hand, the coaching staff gave Vladislav Yemchenko and Danil Sheyanov a rest – they watched the game from the first row, alongside Kirill Temirov, Vsevolod Ishchenko, and also Karvel Anderson and BJ Johnson, who arrived from the US to cheer our team in the playoffs. Such a roster, if everyone was healthy, could’ve fought for medals in the VTB United League, don’t you think?
Andrei Martyuk scored the first 5 points for Lokomotiv, three of which were from beyond the arc. In the first 3 minutes, Antonius Cleveland and Patrick Miller also scored from afar – 11:2. In turn, Yevgeny Voronov scored a 3-pointer, but in their next three attacks, MBA-MAI players made turnovers, so the hosts ran away in three-on-one and two-on-zero breaks, getting calm opportunities to perform some show time. By the middle of the quarter, the scoreboard was 22:7 – what a pace!
The visitors’ timeouts allowed them to gather themselves a little, but Loko still had a lot of freedom in attack. Before the end of the quarter, Dmitry Uzinsky had time to show his mastery under the hoop, Anton Kvitkovskikh and Tahjere McCall joined the list of today’s 3-point scorers – 34:16 by the first break.
At the beginning of the 2nd quarter, Martyuk scored another 3-pointer – but the opponent had already scored 4 points. Gudumak made 2 points after a good run, Cleveland scored from the perimeter – so the MBA-MAI coaches took a timeout to prevent the gap growing more than “+19”.
The Muscovites began to shoot more often from afar, made it several times – and now the difference in the score is already 14 points. But the hosts continued to score (sometimes very beautifully). After Isaiah Whaley’s turnaround shot from 4 meters, all 11 Lokomotiv players who had time to be in the game had scored points by the 16th minute. And Whaley caught a good rhythm and scored twice from passes by Miller. It was also Miller who summed up the score in the first half a great assist by Yelatontsev – 60:44.
In the first two attacks after the game resumed, the visitors won back 6 points, but this heated up Martyuk, who scored two more three-pointers by himself. Maxim Barashkov took up the challenge – 3+3 and 70:57 on the scoreboard. At that moment, both teams got much harder in defense, and by the end of the quarter, the score had not changed much – 76:62.
The decisive ten minutes began, and MBA-MAI quickly reduced its deficit to 10 points. But soon Gudumak scored, spinning under the ring, Kvitkovskikh made a 3-pointer, then dunked from a pass by Artyom Chevarenkov.
However, soon Kvitkovskikh left the court with too many fouls, and the visitors got even closer – now at 9 points. Shots by Mikhail Vedishchev and John Jenkins came in very handy – Lokomotiv entered the final 2 minutes leading 90:80. And soon Vedishchev and Whaley turned the remaining seconds into a formality with another shots.
On Sunday, April 13, Loko will finish the regular season with a home game against Uralmash. This will be a kind of rehearsal for the quarterfinals – we will play the same opponent in the first round of the playoffs.