“Astana” didn't visit “Almaty Legion” in the southern capital for over a year. Almaty team was on the second line in the standings before this game and were definitely going to resist our team, but the capital's squad arrived in Almaty as a favorite. In this game, Emil Rajkovic released imports Devin Marble and Jeremiah Hill onto the court.
The game started completely under the control of our team. Devin Marble opened the scoring and Robert Pan, with his three-pointer and two free throws, only strengthened the position of our team. Dmitriy Gavrilov and Maxim Marchuk brought our advantage to 13 points in the fourth minute, when at the same time the hosts could not open their score. At the end of the fourth minute, Almaty players were able to hit the target and started being more competitive in their performance. Until the end of the first quarter, a more or less equal struggle took place. During this time, Jeremiah Hill, Rustam Murzagaliev, Anton Ponomarev and Askar Maidekin replenished our numbers on the scoreboard substantially, and two three-pointers from Vadim Shcherbak established the final score of the first quarter — 16:31 in our favor. In the first minutes of the second quarter, “Astana” kept a comfortable distance of 15 points, but “Almaty Legion” continued to fight and at some point was able to seize the initiative. Our advantage has not completely disappeared, but closer to the equator of the quarter it has almost halved, reaching eight points. Although the points earned by Jeremiah Hill, Vadim Shcherbak and Roberta Pan quickly returned the advantage of “Astana” to fourteen points. Until the end of the first half, “Legion” was able to win back several points, but the teams left for a long break with an eleven point difference in the score — 39:50.
The hosts, after switching sides, continued to resist and did not allow our team textend the gap further, which went up to eighteen points in advantage of “Astana» in the first five minutes of the third quarter. “Legionnaires” showed a good game and after five minutes of the third segment of the game were losing only twelve points, that is, they lost only one point in five minutes. The Almaty team imposed their pace in the game and in two minutes and twenty seconds before the end of the third quarter their lead was reduced to nine points and the intrigue in the match remained quite sharp. But the points of Devin Marble, Maxim Marchuk and Askar Maidekin returned a double-digit advantage for “Astana”, which finished the third period with a gap of 13 points — 60:73. But in the fourth quarter the capital's team managed to break the hosts' game and two minutes later our team was already winning more than twenty points. Our guys did not stop there and continued to be getting their wat, and by the middle of the fourth quarter Jeremiah Hill brought our lead to thirty points. The hosts clearly couldn't work out the last quarter, and they lost control of the match to our team. Thirty points difference five minutes before the end of the game have already ensured the victory of “Astana”. Two and a half minutes before the end, Andrey Litvinenko brought his team's score to one hundred points, while “Astana” has already won more than thirty-five points. The last points in this meeting were scored by Anton Ponomarev, who established the final score — 67: 107.
Most productive:
- «Astana» — in this match all the players of the capital's team who entered the court scored points, but Askar Maidekin became the most productive — 22 points, who, in addition, made 5 rebounds and 3 assists. Jeremiah Hill chalked up 15 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals. Devin Marble and Robert Pan scored 13 points each, but Robert also chalked up 6 more rebounds. Anton Ponomarev had 12 points, 7 rebounds and 4 steals, and Maxim Marchuk, although he scored only 3 points, made 13 rebounds and 3 assists and 3 steals.
- «Almaty Legion» — Roman Lagutin became the most productive among Almaty people — 27 points, 4 rebounds and 2 steals. And Dmitriy Sviridov has 8 points and 12 rebounds.
Consequences: “Astana” continues to confidently continue without defeats on the first line of the National League, meanwhile “Almaty Legion” after this defeat lost the second position, giving it to “Barsy Atyrau”.
The next match: the second game of the series with the “Almaty Legion” will take place tomorrow on December 9, also in Almaty on the site of the sports hall of KazNU named after Al-Farabi. The match starts at 20:00 Nur-Sultan time. The online broadcast of the game will be available on the home page of our website and on our
YouTube channel.
Detailed information about the tournament, tournament tables, schedule and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
