The Lokomotiv Kuban guard scored 20 points against UNICS (79:82), more than anyone else on the team.
- It's hard to call the result good for Loko, but today's game looked better than against UNICS in early January. Do you agree?
- Well, at least we beat them on rebounds today. UNICS is strong in that metrics—we know how many 2nd and even 3rd chances they get after rebounds. I think we stopped them well in the paint in the 1st half: we fought hard, scoring easy points because UNICS got to rebound with almost entire team, and if we grab the ball, they have a hard time defending in transition. But something broke in the 2nd half. We let them grab a few rebounds on our backboard, they got a feel for the game, came back, and we lost in the end. It was a shame we let them get close again when we let our defense slip up at the very end of the 2nd quarter. UNICS has pulled off a few games like that recently. We should have stopped them from doing that today. We didn't.
- Today you shot more than usual and set your new career high—20 points. Was that your coach's directive, or did you take the initiative?
- The plays just happened to give me open shots, thanks to my teammates. I just tried to be where I needed to be and score. It turned out I had another career high, and we lost again.
- Your previous career high—19 points—was against CSKA. How do you manage to put in your best performances against the tournament leaders?
- I don't know. Some might think we approach teams in the Top 4 differently than teams lower down. But we've stumbled over this many times, and it's definitely not the case that we approach someone differently. We try to do our best every game, but that's sport: some score, some miss, some handle the pressure, some don't. And that's just how it goes.
- Why have Loko had such a hard time in the 1st quarters in recent games?
- We also want to figure out why this is happening. There's no lack of motivation. Perhaps it's even because we're too eager to start aggressively and take unnecessary risks. But it's the desire to win, the desire to achieve the result. The main thing is to maintain this attitude until the end, and that doesn't always happen. But we're working on it.
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