Both teams started the game with all-Russian starting lines. Nikita Mikhailovsky scored the first points, but the Krasnodar team quickly found the key to the isolation play of Samara’s leader, and after 4 straight points from Anton Kvitkovskikh, Loko took the lead. Ilya Popov scored the next 6 points, but Samara wasn’t far behind – 10:8 by the 5th minute.
Vince Hunter entered the game and immediately ran on a fast break after a steal by Ivan Samoylenko. Thirty seconds later, the home team’s coaches were forced to call a timeout after Kirill Temirov made it 15:8. Then, for a couple of minutes, neither team could score, until Samoylenko did it. Samara hit two 3-pointers, Vsevolod Ishchenko scored 4 points in a row for Lokomotiv, and then a significant event occurred: Jeremiah Martin returned to the court after missing for almost two months. It was clear he was very eager to score, but his first few attempts missed the basket, and the final decisive action of the first quarter was Ishchenko‘s block on Danila Chikarev‘s shot, preserving the score at 21:15 mark.
On the first attack of the 2nd quarter, Hunter slipped and fell but kept the ball – and Temirov finished the attack with a long shot, then immediately made a steal, ran beyond the arc, and scored 3 more points, 27:15! Then Hunter delivered a brilliant 20 seconds: a floater, a steal, a dunk – and Samara went to timeout with the score 31:16.
The next few attacks on both sides ended in free throws, and then Anton Yudin called for a minute break after Artyom Chevarenkov‘s long shot brought Samara within 11 points, 35:24. Makar Konovalov soon proved that Lokomotiv’s players were scoring points in streaks that evening – making 5 in a row. After Kvitkovskikh‘s 3-pointer made it 43:26, the pace of the game picked up, and in the next two minutes, the opponents combined for 11 points. Yudin‘s second timeout slowed things down a bit, but Martin had enough time to score before the break – 51:33.
Just after the restart, Kvitkovskikh hit a 3-pointer, followed by Ishchenko scoring 2 points and then making his 3rd block this evening, which allowed Konovalov to add another 3, 59:35. The teams scored evenly for a couple of minutes, but then it was time for another Loko player’s scoring streak – 4 points from Samoylenko. A powerful reverse dunk by Popov made it 66:42, and then Pavel Ryabkov added 3 points (our youngster keeps his 100% from 3-point range, now 2-for-2). Two mini-streaks from Martin – 4 and 5 points, sandwiched by a long-range shot from Ishchenko – brought the 3rd quarter to an end, 81:51.
From the opening seconds of the final 10 minutes, Samara rushed for a comeback, but Loko found a good answer to every opponent’s shot—at least until the 35th minute, when Andrei Savrasov and Dmitry Cheburkin each scored 3-pointers, making it 90:65. After Yudin‘s timeout and Popov‘s layup, the outcome of the game became clear: 27-point gap can’t be eliminated in 4 minutes.
The only remaining question was whether Lokomotiv would reach 100 points mark. Popov eventually did. A special mention should also be given to Ishchenko, who made his 4th block of the game and remains by far the team’s best blocker.
After UNICS lost in Perm a couple of hours earlier, Lokomotiv Kuban remained the team with the longest winning streak in the championship – now five.
The VTB United League will now be on a 2-week break. Loko will play their next game on Friday, December 5th, against CSKA. See you at the Basket Hall!