Astana won another victory over Minsk in the regular season of the VTB United League.
This contest was the most exciting in the Kazakh-Belarusian trilogy of this season — each team won two quarters. At first, Astana too quickly broke away from the Minsk team after the first quarter, but already in the second quarter, the guests beat their rivals. Our team regained the initiative by winning the third period. Still, the final ten minutes again turned in favor of Minsk, and the team led by Alexei Sukhovetsky did not have enough points to win or take the game to overtime — the game ended with a score 86:82 in favor of Astana.
According to the results of the match, the leaders of the Kazakh team were Kwame Vaughn (22 points), Valery Likhodei (18 points, 6 rebounds), Markell Johnson (14 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists), Michael Myers (8 points, 7 rebounds).
Among the opponents, Jovan Šljivančanin (21 points, 8 rebounds), DaKuan Bracey (17 points, 6 assists, 3 steals), Zach Smith (14 points, 6 rebounds), Darol Hernandez-Zinenko (10 points, 8 rebounds) were the most effective.
«The game turned out to be unpredictable. Each team in each quarter won by a big score. This is probably due to insufficient concentration; when one team scores great, the other sags a little, and the opposite happens in the next quarter. In these catch-ups, we did not have enough time, unfortunately. Astana attacked very well from a distance today. They were aggressive in the paint. Because they made more losses, we made a minimum, and due to this, we held on. In principle, we had a chance to win,» said Alexei Sukhovetsky, acting head coach of Minsk.
The teams remain on the fifth and sixth lines of the standings of their mini-group.
Now the team of Oleg Kiselev has a trip to Atyrau ahead, where from February 6 to 11, matches of the
Cup of Kazakhstan will be held. Then on February 15, there will be a meeting away from Samara. And to attend the next home match, the capital's basketball fans will have to wait for spring.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, schedule, and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
