The very first moment of the game showed how ready Lokomotiv was for the fight: Vince Hunter stole the ball from UNICS’s Marcus Bingham, dribbled the full court, drew a foul from Bingham, and scored 2 points from the free-throw line. Patrick Miller‘s 2+1 made it 5:0 soon, but Kazan not only tied the game but took the lead, 5:7. Kirill Temirov immediately leveled the score, Miller made a steal, Royce Hamm blocked a shot by Jalen Reynolds, but Lokomotiv’s offense wasn’t going well, and at one point, UNICS was 16-7 ahead.
But the Krasnodar team was playing well, which soon began to show in the score: Miller made another steal and converted it into 2 points, Kassius Robertson hit 2 free throws and then a 3-pointer, Danil Sheyanov performed great in the post. The first quarter ended 18:22 in favor of UNICS.
Two points from Hunter and 3 from Ivan Samoylenko at the start of the next period brought Lokomotiv within one attack, 23:26. Samoylenko then put in a strong defense, scoring 2 more points afterwards. However, by the midpoint of the quarter, UNICS had run away again, 27:32. After Anton Yudin‘s timeout, no team scored for 2 minutes, until Temirov did it. The low-scoring quarter was capped by two 3-pointers from Paris Lee, making it 29:38 in favor of the home team.
After the side switch, the tight defensive play kept going on. Meanwhile, Loko began to capitalize better on their chances: Hunter and Miller scored, and by the 24th minute, they gap was gradually reduced to 4 points, 34:38. Then, the tempo suddenly increased, and Hunter and Anton Kvitkovskikh tied the score. Only in the 26th minute UNICS managed to score their first points of the 3rd quarter. Frequent lead changes began, and after the fifth one, Loko went into the final break leading 50:49, thanks to Hunter‘s excellent work in the opponent’s paint. The Krasnodar team can certainly be proud of this 10-minute period.
Early in the 4th quarter, Lokomotiv twice took a 3-point lead, due to Robertson and then to Sheyanov. But then, a worrying moment emerged: Miller limped after a collision with his own player and barely made it to the team medics. Kvitkovskikh hit a 3-pointer to make it 57:53, but Lokomotiv’s offense suddenly stopped at that moment, and UNICS took the lead – 57:64 after two Andrei Lopatin‘s 3-pointers in a row.
Hunter scored two points after a timeout, but Dmitry Kulagin restored the 7-point gap. Reynolds received a technical foul, and Miller made it 60:66 with 1.53 to play. And then, unfortunately, our team made 2 consecutive turnovers. The score difference became two-digit, and UNICS saved it till the end – 63:74.
Lokomotiv managed to stop the seemingly unstoppable Bingham, who only scored 9 points and made 4 rebounds this evening. Unfortunately, UNICS also stopped Loko’s top scorers.
Next, Lokomotiv Kuban will play a home game against Samara on October 25, after which the team will again go on a three-game away trip – Avtodor, CSKA, Mega (the latter will be an inter-season Winline Basket Cup game).