Basketball club «Astana» held the first home game in the National League. Our guests — Kostanay «Tobol» could not impose their game and lost significantly. From the American players for this game, Darko Russon announced Skylar Spencer and Anthony Hickey, who, together with Nikolai Bazhin, Rustam Murzagaliev, and Maxim Marchuk, formed the starting five.
Skylar Spencer won the jump ball and opened the scoring in the first attack. Kostanay also did not wait long and opened their score in a few seconds, but it turned out to be their only points in the first five minutes of the game. On the other hand, «Astana» was very effective and quickly increased the lead. In the first five minutes, Nikolay Bazhin scored the points, Anthony Hickey and Maxim Marchuk also scored a couple of times, and Skylar Spencer gained 9 points. After the equator of the quarter, the guests began to act more efficiently, but this did not significantly affect the gap between the teams. Oleg Balashov, Mark Tikhonenko, and Ruslan Aitkali scored points in our squad until the end of the first period. After ten minutes, the capital team won a significant advantage — 30:10. In the second quarter, the hosts went ahead confidently. In the first minutes of the game in the quarter, almost every successful attack of «Tobol» «Astana» responded with a pair of its own, and the capital's advantage gradually increased. Anthony Hickey was highly active and distinguished by the points scored during this time. Ruslan Aitkali and Nikolay Bazhin also updated their accounts. For more than three game minutes at the end of the first half, only «Astana» was gaining points. Aitkali and Balashov again distinguished themselves, and Dmitry Gavrilov, Rustam Murzagaliev, and Robert Pan opened their scores in this game. Our team added almost twenty more points to their advantage and left for the big break with a large margin — 58:19.
After fifteen minutes, Mark Tikhonenko brought the capital's squad advantage by forty points with his three-pointer. After that, Nikolay Bazhin earned two points, and then Tikhonenko scored two more three-pointers. The gap of our team approached fifty points by the middle of the third period. True, the capital's score did not increase in the next three minutes except for one point from Dmitry Gavrilov. «Tobol,» in turn, was able to reduce its gap slightly. The end of the third quarter remained with our basketball players, who again increased their lead. Robert Pan and Rustam Murzagaliev distinguished themselves with more points, and Mark Tikhonenko scored 5 points. «Astana» has long secured a victory for itself and won before the final ten minutes with a score of 79:32. At the start of the fourth quarter, Robert Pan did not take a couple of points; after three points from Oleg Balashov, the advantage of «Astana» exceeded fifty points. «Tobol» made a small leap towards the middle of the period, but then our players again seized the initiative. Ruslan Aitkali scored another three-pointer, and Andrei Litvinenko opened his match score. Robert Pan scored a couple of times, and it was after his points, the gap again passed the fifty-point mark. At the end of the game, Ruslan Aitkali and Andrey Litvinenko practiced long-range shots. Ruslan was accurate twice, but the score exceeded one hundred after Andrey's scores. As a result, our team won an extremely confident victory —
107:48.
Most productive:
- «Astana» — Ruslan Aitkali was doing well from a long distance today, having realized 5 three-pointers out of ten attempts; in total, he scored 21 points, made five rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 interceptions. Mark Tikhonenko chalked up 19 points and 6 rebounds, and 3 assists. Anthony Hickey scored 10 points, 3 rebounds, 6 assists, and 3 steals in his 13 minutes of play. Nikolay Bazhin updated his personal score by 9 points, 2 rebounds, and 5 assists. Skylar Spencer played only ten and a half minutes but scored 9 points and did 2 interceptions and 2 block shots. Robert Pan also scored 9 points and blocked the opponents' shots twice; Robert also made 5 rebounds and 5 interceptions.
- «Tobol» - Shaim Kuanov became the only player who can record this match as his asset — 20 points and 4 rebounds. Anton Bykov has 8 points and 5 rebounds.
Consequences: «Astana» confidently leads in the standings, and «Tobol» lags behind the top three.
Next match: The second game of the series with «Tobol» will occur tomorrow, December 13, in Nur-Sultan at the cycle track «Saryarka» arena. The match
starts at 19:30 Nur-Sultan time. The online broadcast of the game will be available on the main page of our website.
Detailed information about the tournament, tournament tables, schedule, and results of matches are published in the
Tournaments section.
