For Loko, the game had no serious tournament significance—they couldn’t qualify for the Winline Basket Cup (WBC) Final Four no matter the outcome—so Tomislav Tomović gave Patrick Miller and Vince Hunter a rest. So, when Ilya Popov picked his 1st foul just 14 seconds into the game, concerns began to rise for our only nominal center for the evening. However, Ilya quickly pulled himself together, started playing cleaner, and the first to be sent to the bench with two fouls was his counterpart, the 7’3″, 19-year-old wunderkind Luigi Suigo.
Anton Kvitkovskikh scored Lokomotiv’s first 5 points. Then Vsevolod Ishchenko scored greatly despite being fouled. In general, everyone was scoring big: the game’s debut was incredibly dynamic, with fast possessions and almost no misses. Mega held the lead for some time, but then Jeremiah Martin and Kvitkovskikh played an alley-oop, the Serbs made a mistake on the throw-in, and Martin set the score at 20:17 – quite a lot for a 5-minute period, right?
The substitutions came, and the players who entered the game scored 8 points for Lokomotiv in a short period: Zakhar Vedischev hit a 3-pointer, Danil Sheyanov leaked through the opponent’s defense, and Zakhar hit another 3-pointer! But the pace slowed down a bit: in the final seconds of the 1st quarter, Loko was leading 31:29 and had the ball, but Ognjen Srzentić stole the ball and hit a 3-pointer! With 63 points in the quarter, the opponents set a new WBC record.
At the start of the 2nd quarter, Kyrell Luc surprised the crowd: Mega’s point guard, who is listed at 180 cm but looks much shorter, slammed down a two-handed dunk. Incidentally, at the end of the first ten minutes, the visitors scored another circus shot: Asim Đulović hit the hoop from behind the baseline, sending the ball over the backboard in a high arc, but the referees stopped play earlier, and the shot was disallowed.
Meanwhile, the high-tempo play continued: thanks to baskets by Kvitkovskikh, Martin, and B.J. Johnson, Loko at one point led by 6 points, but Đulović hit two consecutive 3-pointers, making it 48:45. Sheyanov pushed his opponents off the hoop, but Urban Kroflić scored 3 more points, and Mega soon took the lead. Before the big break, Ishchenko managed to score a free throw, and Bogoljub Marković set the score at 52:54 in favor of the Belgrade team.
As the game resumed, Mike Moore quickly put Lokomotiv ahead with a long-range shot, Martin began churning out isolations, Popov dunked to the delight of his personal fans, Kirill Temirov scored 2+1, but Mega weren’t far behind. After the hosts made two missed 3-point attempts midway through the quarter, Suigo made it “+6” for the visitors. Then it was Zakhar Vedishchev‘s time: 3 points, an assist to Temirov, 2 more points, and Lokomotiv took the lead back, 73:72.
Kroflić began scoring from any distance without missing, to which the hosts responded with Johnson‘s long-range shots and free throws, the accuracy rate of which suddenly improved. Right at the end of the quarter, Makar Konovalov blocked a shot from Savo Drezgić and scored a buzzer-beater, the value of which the referees calculated with the help of video review throughout the break and still ruled it a 3-pointer, 85:82 in our favor.
At the start of the 4th quarter, tensions flared: Tomović was given a technical, Kvitkovskikh and Srzentić had a rumble and received unsportsmanlike fouls. After free throws, the score was 86:85 for Lokomotiv. At that point, the lead had already changed 14 times since the start of the game, and the score had been tied 11 times. However, Kvitkovskikh scored a 3-pointer, the Krasnodar team defended well, and Ishchenko, with a pass from Konovalov, sent Mega to a timeout, 91:85.
The pause allowed the visitors to regroup and claw back 4 points, but another 3-pointer by Zakhar Vedischev (he totalled 16 points today) sparked a new Lokomotiv run: two isos by Martin and a dunk by Popov made it 100:91 with 3 minutes remaining.
Mega didn’t give up: Kroflić, Drezgić, and Luc combined for 7 points in a minute, but then Ishchenko broke free from the pressure and sent Mega to another timeout, 104:98. In the next episode, Lokomotiv forced their opponents to commit a 24-second violation – and while the rest of the game dragged on for a long time due to tactical penalties, the guests had no more real chances to save the game.
On Sunday, February 15, 4 Lokomotiv players—Ishchenko, Kvitkovskikh, Miller, and Hunter—will take part in the VTB United League All-Star Game. Our next championship game is on the 17th, in Perm.