The basketball club «Astana» for the first time in history was defeated in the Cup of Kazakhstan and missed the main trophy of the tournament in the decisive game against «Barsy Atyrau».
The beginning of the game was promising. Nikolai Bazhin opened the scoring with an accurate three-pointer in the very first attack, and Rustam Murzagaliev added another three to our team's score. Only after that, «Barsy» were finally able to open their account. Meanwhile, our guys continued to attack effectively from behind the three-point arc, and by the middle of the first period, Oleg Balashov made three successful shots at once. After five minutes of the game, «Astana» was in the lead by eight points. Then Oleg Balashov earned two more points, and they became the first points of our team that were not scored from a paint. Then the long-range artillery worked accurately again — this time Nikolai Bazhin and Rustam Murzagaliyev were twice accurate from behind the arc. «Barsy» were also scoring points, but by this point, they were already 10 points behind. In the end, the opponents made a mini-spurt, but Rustam Murzagaliev put an end to the period, again from a three-point shot – 26:18. At the beginning of the second quarter, our attempts did not reach the goal, and the opponent began to act quite effectively, at this point, Darko Russo intervened in the game. After the timeout, two attacks were left for our players, Dmitry Gavrilov and Oleg Balashov earned two points each, but «Barsy» also kept their finger on the pulse and were not far behind. In the middle of the quarter, only Dmitry Gavrilov scored points — five points, and during this time «Barsy» approached us at a distance of two points. In the last minutes of the half, the yellow-turquoise ones acted a little more successfully than their counterparts. Points were scored by Balashov, Murzagaliev, Marchuk, and Bazhin. Our gap again became two-digit, but we won the first half with a score of 46:37.
No one promised a simple game in this match, and the first half proved that «Barsy Atyrau» prepared for this game both physically and mentally, and also fought for every ball on the court. And if in the first half our team coped with the opposition of rivals, then in the third half there was a serious decline. Our players were quite good in defense, due to which the performance of the opponents has slightly decreased, but the attack of «Astana» frankly collapsed and our performance became four times worse compared to the previous quarter. The first points in the second half were brought by Rustam Murzagaliev, again from a distance. “Barsy” also struggled to score points, but at the same time confidently reduced their backlog. Oleg Balashov was accurate from an average distance, but this happened four and a half minutes after our extreme hits, and Oleg's effective attack was the last one in this quarter for our team. «Barsy» did not catch up with «Astana» in the third quarter, but before the final period, they lost only two points — 51:49. The situation escalated even more after the beginning of the fourth quarter, «Barsy» first leveled the score, and then took the lead. Another time-out from Darko Russo did not affect the situation much, but our team scored the first points in the fourth quarter immediately after a minute's pause — Rustam Murzagaliyev had three more points. Barca continued to keep ahead and slightly increased their lead, but after three points from Maksim Marchuk and Nikolai Bazhin, five minutes before the end of the match, the difference was minimal, and after another two points from Bazhin, Astana took the lead. After that Maxim Marchuk immediately increased our lead by a couple of points. The opponents continued to put pressure and realized a couple of attacks in a row, again coming out ahead by one point. There were still three minutes left to play, two of which brought nothing to the teams, but then «Barsy Atyrau» got a few more important points and thirty seconds before the end they were in the lead by five points. Rustam Murzagaliyev converted a couple of free throws, reducing the gap to three points and our team had the opportunity to regain the initiative, but our attack was “choked” and» Barsy Atyrau» celebrated the victory —
66:70.
Most scoring:
- «Astana» — Rustam Murzagaliev once again became the best in our team — 21 points, 3 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals. Oleg Balashov scored 17 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists. Nikolai Bazhin has 14 points, 6 rebounds, 2 steals. Maxim Marchuk and Dmitry Gavrilov scored 7 points each, in addition, Maxim chalked up 9 rebounds, and Dmitry 6 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 block shots.
- Barsy Atyrau — Rustam Utegen had a very good game — 24 points, 11 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals. In addition, Vladimir Ivanov, Adilkhan Marat, and Roman Marchuk played very well.
Consequences: “Astana” for the first time in history suffered a defeat in the Cup of Kazakhstan and this year gave the right to be the owner of this trophy to “Barsam Atyrau”, becoming silver medalists.
Next match: Already this weekend On February 13, the yellow-turquoise team will face CSKA Moscow on the road in the VTB United League.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, schedule, and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
