Basketball club «Astana» became the second in the pre-season tournament Raimundo Sarguno Cup in Lithuania. In the final our guys could not overcome the hosts — the Lithuanian team “Lietkabelis”.
Our rivals defeated the Estonian team — “Parnu Sadam '' the day before, thanks to which they reached the final. «Lietkabelis» has a very rich history, as it was founded back in 1964. The team from Panevezys has been participating in the main Lithuanian Championship for a very long time. Over the past 30 years, they have become Lithuanian silver medalists once and took bronze twice, and they took third place in the last two seasons. Over the past 5 years, they became third in the King Mindaugas Cup three times and won silver medals twice. In the Baltic League “Lietkabelis” twice won the Challenge Cup and once became the bronze winner in the elite division. In addition, over the past five seasons, they have been constantly participating in European tournaments — Euro Cups and the European Champions League. In the entire history “Astana” and “Lietkabelis” have met only once, it was a friendly game in 2016. Then the Lithuanians won.
The game for the Raimundo Sarguno Cup began on equal footing after five minutes of the game there still was a draw, and according to the results of the first quarter, «Astana» was in the lead, though by only 3 points — 18:21. In the second quarter, the team went neck to neck, and the score gap practically did not change. Darko Russo's team went to the big break with an advantage of 3 points — 38:41. After the break, the game pattern did not change much and after five minutes of the third period, “Astana” remained ahead with +4. But the second half of the third quarter was absolutely unsuccessful for the Kazakh team. The Lithuanians managed to score 14 points in five minutes and missed only 4. The yellow-turquoise squad's advantage of +4 points turned into a lag of -6 points before the final period. Unfortunately, our team was unable to recoup the gap, and moreover allowed the opponents to break away, and five minutes before the end was losing 8 points. Such a lag is quite possible to win back, but today, unfortunately, this did not happen. As a result, the Lithuanians won their home tournament, beating the Kazakh team with a score of 82:71.
“Astana” today lost the game under the glass, losing 10 rebounds, while losing noticeably under their own glass. Also, our team made more losses. The best in our squad today are Anthony Hickey (18 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists) and Jaylen Barford (17 points and 6 rebounds), in addition, Dmitry Gavrilov scored 8 points and made 6 rebounds today.
Schedule and results of pre-season friendly matches of PBC «Astana»:
- September 9 — «Juventus», Utena — 58:91
- September 11 — «Labas GAS», Prienai — 62:62
- September 17 — «CBet», Jonava
- September 18 — «VEF», Riga
