Lokomotiv-Kuban dedicated their first home game of this series to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Vsevolod Ishchenko quite unexpectedly appeared in the hosts’ roster. Good for the 20-years old guard, who managed to recover before the end of the season. Kirill Temirov was sent to the bench for this game, and Ishchenko spent 2 minutes on the court in the 2nd quarter, without scoring. But we’re getting ahead of the story.
Vince Hunter opened the scoring from the free throw line, but Zenit only was leading for 14 seconds: Andrei Martyuk tied the game very quickly, and 30 seconds later put Lokomotiv ahead; then Tahdere McCall stepped in, first intercepting a pass from Dwayne Bacon and sending Anton Kvitkovskikh on a counterattack, and then scoring from afar himself – 9:2, the Krasnodar team had a good start in the second game in a row.
And just like 4 days ago, Loko stayed good throughout the 1st quarter: they made it as difficult as possible for the opponent’s leaders to shoot, while scoring quite regularly. Patrick Miller hit the hoop with close contact and without contact, Martyuk was equally dangerous both on the arc and under the hoop, Kirill Yelatontsev remembered what it was like to score from the perimeter. The quarter was summed up by a 3-pointer by Antonius Cleveland. 24:13 – very similar to the numbers 28:15 that were on the scoreboard after the first ten minutes of Game #2…
The déjà vu intensified when Isaiah Whaley scored two long shots in a row at the start of the 2nd quarter. We had already seen this in Game #2 – except for there it happened the 4th quarter.
But few expected what followed. Martyuk, despite Hunter’s resistance, scored with a foul. In the next episode, Hunter’s shot was blocked by Whaley – and the Zenit center went to clarify something with the referees, for which he received two quick technical fouls, the latter of which led to his sending off. It took several Zenit coaches to take Hunter away from the court.
Lokomotiv quickly increased their advantage to 20 points, 37:17. This awakened Zenit, the visitors began to pass more actively, and after 3-pointers by Georgy Zhbanov, Andrey Vorontsevich and Bacon, by the big break they returned the margin to the same “-11” that was after the first quarter, 44:33 in favor of Loko.
The start of the 3rd quarter was Dmitry Uzinsky’s time: the Loko captain scored after the drive to the hoop, then responded with his 3-pointer to Trent Frazier’s long shot. Bacon and Vorontsevich willingly got involved in the shootout from the perimeter. At these moments, the Krasnodar team stayed at a double-digit distance due to Yelatontsev’s spacing under the ring and the efforts of McCall’s, who began to put one shot after another on the target.
At some point, the gap grew to 15 points, but Alex Poythress and Sergey Karasev performed a mini-spurt in response, so Vladislav Yemchenko’s shot in the 29th minute helped to maintain the same “+11” at the end of the quarter, 64:53.
In the 4th quarter, Alexey Shved started to be on fire: he successfully finished Zenit’s attacks, made smart assists… Loko also found someone to take on important shots – Miller made several ones at moments when the gap between the teams was reduced to 6 points. Yet, the opponents entered the final 5 minutes with a score of 72:67 in favor of the hosts. Clutch?
McCall had a different opinion on this matter – he scored 2 points, then made a clever assist to Miller. Martyuk also had something to say: Loko center bravely found several fouls, being flawless from the free throw line; he accepted a tough fight under Zenit’s hoop and scored; then twice more found some space for the good shot, eliminating the nervous ending and making Krasnodar fans happy.
Lokomotiv ended Zenit’s record winning streak, which totaled 25 games. However, the score in the best-of-4 series is 1-2 in favor of the opponent, and now it is very important for our team to maintain a winning attitude – and be prepared for the fact that the Petersburgers will be more furious than we have seen them before.
Be sure to come see this – our semi-final is getting more and more interesting. Go, Loko!
