On the first possession, Andrei Martyuk scored over Vince Hunter which seemed to anger the Lokomotiv center, who returned the favor on the next attack, then stealing the ball from Trent Frazier, and B.J. Johnson brought us 2 more points. The Krasnodar team’s players fought for rebounds very good during this stretch, shooting flawlessly, and after baskets from Mike Moore, Hunter, and Johnson, Zenit’s coaches called a timeout at 11:2.
As soon as play resumed, Hunter made another steal, and Moore hit his second 3-pointer of the day. Martyuk‘s efforts helped Zenit a bit, but Moore, Johnson, and Jeremiah Martin produced a 7-point run to make it 23:9. The remaining 3.5 minutes of the quarter featured a tornado-style drive by Vsevolod Ishchenko, a put-back by Anton Kvitkovskikh, and 5 consecutive points from Vladislav Yemchenko. The teams went into the first intermission with a score of 31:18 in Lokomotiv’s favor.
At the start of the 2nd quarter, the hosts made another run: 3 points from Martin, 2 from Ilya Popov, a dunk from Ishchenko—and they were up 20 by the 12th minute! Lokomotiv was clearly on fire: Popov made a great assist to Ishchenko, Martin kept scoring himself and providing fine assists, like the one to Makar Konovalov on the arc. Frazier‘s 3-pointers helped Zenit avoid falling further behind during this stretch.
However, the hosts’ scoring slowed down slightly toward the big break. Despite baskets from Hunter, Johnson, and Miller, the opponents overcame a 20-point deficit—the teams went to the locker rooms with a score of 54:37.
Moore‘s 2 long-range baskets set the tone of the 3rd quarter. The same did Loko’s hustle: Kirill Temirov scored 2 second-chance points, and Johnson ran for the put-back with such passion that made Sergey Karasev lay on the court in anger. After Johnson‘s dunk and Miller‘s 2+1, the score was 71:49 at midway through the quarter.
Frazier and Andre Roberson made up 5 points, but Martin prevented Zenit from getting any closer: he scored from about 5 meters out, drew a foul when the attacking time seemed hopelessly exhausted, scored again, made a steal, and put Ishchenko up to 2+1 – 79:58 by the third intermission.
Zenit didn’t give up on their comeback attempts: Frazier scored 2+1 and 2 more on the next attack. Moore hit a mid-range shot just before the 24-second clock expired, but Karasev immediately responded from beyond the arc. Then, after a series of mutual errors, Yemchenko made two free throws, Hunter received a technical foul, Martyuk broke through under our basket – and so, in just 3.5 minutes, the gap was reduced to 10 points. After a Lokomotiv timeout, Ishchenko‘s shot was blocked, but Miller made a steal, and Ishchenko and Hunter played an alley-oop. Then Martin took things into his own hands: 7 points on 3 attacks for a 90:73 lead.
Zenit made another run, and after Yemchenko‘s 3-pointer, they were up “–10” again. But Martin immediately responded with a long-range shot – 95:82 with 1.19 on the clock. Lokomotiv was not about to relinquish that lead in front of nearly 5.000 fans in the stands.
This victory moved Lokomotiv-Kuban up to 3rd place in the league table. Our next game is again at home, this one will be the intra-season cup. We’ll play against PARMA on Thursday, January 22, at 8:00 PM. Come and cheer us on!