By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Lokomotiv Kuban tied the series against Barcelona to 2-2, a Game 5 will be played at Krasnodar and coach Giorgos Bartzokas wants his team to stay focused and calm.
As he said: “I think we did a serious game today. We controlled everything that we needed, we should do. And finally we have the players with the personality that decided the result. Although we won in overtime, and the momentum was with Barca, we saw character and personality, we saw mental toughness which is very important now for this level. I think we have to control our emotions. Except for one game with Barcelona, Game 2, which we lost easily, every game was very tight. So it depends on how you control the emotions, how mental toughness you have. We will try to calm down a little bit and analyze the game and prepare for the fifth game.”
According to Barcelona’s coach Xavi Pasccual: “We could have expected this kind of game. It was very important that started behind in the score, because that made us more imprecise or nervous. Our shooting percentages, especially from three-points, killed us. During the overtime, the shooting percentage was the key. It was a tense game, we didn’t find continuity in our defense, and we made some mistakes. During the third quarter we were better, but not in the fourth. We made mistakes that decided the game. The last three-pointer, a block at the end, little things made lose the game in terms of defense and on offense the percentages of three-pointers was decisive. ”
From the losing side, forward Justin Doellman was naturally disappointed: “Today was really difficult. We didn’t play our style and that hurt us. They got out in transition and they killed us on the rebounds. That was the main difference. Unfortunately we lost, but we still have one more game to go. The fans were awesome. Unfortunately we didn’t pull out a win for them. ”
His teammate Tomas Satoransky added: “We let a lot of easy baskets for them that we didn’t allow in previous games and this gives them a lot of shots. And it gives them something that they need because they have a lot of individual talent and can score baskets-one-on-one in the last seconds. And we didn’t play a good game compared to the two others before, not even in offense. We [spent] a lot of energy to force the game to overtime and just didn’t have the energy that we did before. ”
On the other hand, Malcolm Delaney believes that there’s an easy explanation to what happened: “It was tough; Barcelona is a tough team. But we just had to stay together and play 40 minutes today, or 45. We did everything that we normally did in the regular season that made us successful. We moved the ball, we shared it with each other and we got stops. And we played till the end. ”
And Anthony Randolph, the MVP, wants one more: “It was a team win. We kept fighting, you know, this is a tough place to play. I’m just glad we made shots at the end and we got the win. Hopefully we can get a win at home and go to the Final Four. The team, all year we fought and just found way to win and tonight was the same thing. We just gotta get one more. It was tough; they have great players. Any given night somebody can have a good game for them. It’s hard to gameplan for them. We just got lucky tonight. It was a great win for Loko fans, the management, everything. ”
Source:euroleague.net