In the away match of VTB United League «Astana» failed to cope with «Khimki»

20.10.2019, 20:00    Views: 365
Source: Press service
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The first game of the season with one of the strongest teams of VTB United League, «Khimki» became acid test for the updated roster of the Presidential Basketball Club «Astana».

The review is worth starting with the fact that in this game for “Astana” the team's newcomer, Isaiah Whitehead, made his debut. As for «Khimki», their Khimki Aleksey Shved and Stefan Jovic were not declared for this game. Also, the roster did not include Timofey Mozgov, who has not yet played a single game this season.

The hosts opened the score in the match and immediately took the lead, but the capital team did not lag and evened the score by the middle of the first quarter. Nevertheless, unfortunately, it did not succeed in keeping up with their rivals in this quarter, and the score gap was 7 points. In the second quarter, the hosts, with the support of their stands, began to increase their lead, which reached a maximum of around 16 points. Before the start of the big break, Emil Raijovic's players were able to recoup a little — 36:25.

In the third quarter, “Astana” worked on their strategy and pretty thoroughly took up the game. At first, “Khimki” had to take more care to protect their basket, but they could not cope with this task, and the backlog of “Astana” in the meantime was noticeably reduced. Then «Khimki» made another attempt to turn the tide of the game, but it was also parried by our team when the backlog of 15 points was halved by the end of the quarter. For most of the fourth quarter the pressure in the match was very tense and for three and a half minutes before the final buzzer, “Astana” lost only 6 points. However, in the remaining time, the capital team did not have enough physicality, and as a result, «Khimki» won pretty confidently — 73:56 (20:13, 16:12, 16:20, 21:11).

«Khimki» is the undefeated leader of VTB United League, however, in this match their realization was lame — 37% from the game, but for «Astana» this indicator was not brilliant at all either — 29%. If you go deeper into the statistics, then we can notice that “Astana” lost in many ways: — 10 in assists, — 10 in interceptions, 10 more losses than an opponent, as a result — 10 points after losing an opponent, — 10 points in fast break. The statistics are completely unsatisfactory, but our leaders did their best, and here, perhaps, the indicator intervened, which had a fatal effect on the game — bench points: 33 for «Khimki» versus 7 for «Astana». Our leaders played more than 32 minutes in this game, and the leaders of «Khimki» played 10 minutes less, and as a result, were significantly fresh at the end of the game.



The most effective players: The best player in the “Astana” was Dusan Ristic, with his double-double (10 points, 18 rebounds), Jeremiah Hill scored the most points in the game (16 points, 3 rebounds, 3 steals), and it is worth noting Malcolm Hill who scored 11 points, and had 6 rebounds and 3 assists. In «Khimki», Devin Booker brought a lot of trouble with his double-double (15 points, 11 rebounds), as well as Jeremy Evans, who was not announced at the start (10 points, 8 rebounds, 5 steals).

Head coach of “Astana” Emil Rajkovic:
- Congratulations to «Khimki», today they were the best team. We have a very short rotation, as well as the new player Isaiah Whitehead, who has spent only two practices with the team. That is why our game was unorganized. In the last quarter, we reduced the gap to five points, showed character, but we did not have freshness to defend with the same energy and try to win the match. There are two weeks of practicing ahead, for which we must improve our game, first of all, at the organization level. I hope that during this time we will intensify because to increase the rotation we need another player with whom we could become more competitive in the next matches.

The head coach of «Khimki» Rimas Kurtinaitis:
- I am pleased with the game in defense, the guys did their best. There were some problems in the attack, but at the moment we are looking at how to survive since we play without three point guards and from the real first numbers we have Vyacheslav Zaitsev. Today we competed well, the realization of the moments could be better, but it is all fixable. Most importantly, we performed well on the rebound and defense, and did not allow the opponent to get the ball and made many steals.
 


Next match: Astana will hold the next matches at home on October 24 and 25, the capital basketball players will host «Sinegorye» from Kokshetau on their court as part of the National League regular season. The next match of the VTB United League, wards of Emil Raikovich will play in Nur-Sultan on November 4 against St. Petersburg “Zenit”.

Detailed information about the tournament, standings, the schedule and match results are published in the Tournaments section.



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