Vince Hunter scored on the very first attack, but Livio Jean-Charles immediately tied it, and a minute later gave CSKA the lead. Kirill Temirov‘s 3-pointer, Anton Kvitkovskikh‘s hard basket, Patrick Miller‘s 5-meter 2-pointer allowed the Krasnodar team to stay in the game, but not for long: CSKA repeatedly found open players at the arc (6 of 8 long shots scored in the 1st quarter), and Casper Ware, Tonye Jekiri, and Nikita Kurbanov mercilessly exploited every opportunity to break through to our hoop – 16:34 at the end of the quarter.
Lokomotiv’s defense seemed to get better at the start of the next period, but the offense continued to struggle. For a long time, our only points scored during the 2nd quarter were 3-pointer by Kvitkovskikh and 3 free throws by Temirov. Only towards the end of the quarter did things improve slightly: Ilya Popov scored despite hard contact, Ivan Samoylenko‘s lob found the net, and Popov put the ball back just at the buzzer—but the distance between the teams had grown much further than the Krasnodar fans would have wished, 32:56.
After the game resumed, Hunter took the initiative: his steals and 4 straight points narrowed the gap slightly, but CSKA began raining down 3-pointers again, making it 39:67 midway through the period. Temirov scored a difficult layup, and Danil Sheyanov performed a 3-pointer, but the opponent continued to steadily increase their lead. If not for Vsevolod Ishchenko‘s long-range shot just before the buzzer, by the final quarter things would have been even worse than 47-79.
The VTB United League record for the biggest successful comeback is “–27”. Unfortunately, another record fell tonight: Lokomotiv Kuban had never ever lost by 40 points (the previous “achievement” was set on February 17, 2024, in St. Petersburg, 67:106).
Our guys tried to do something, there were some good episodes, like 3-pointers by Kvitkovskikh and Samoylenko, a run by Makar Konovalov, and Ishchenko’s fight for an offensive rebound–but these isolated moments had no real impact on thcourse of the game, in which CSKA won every quarter and surpassed the 100-point mark for the first time this season.
Let’s hope Lokomotiv learns from this lesson, and become better. In a long tournament, it’s not how it starts, but how it ends that matters. We thank everyone who came to support our team in the stands at Megasport. Sometimes, dark times are a sign of good things to come.
We believe in the team!