By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
CSKA Moscow head coach Dimitris Itoudis a lot more from his players than the poor display they put on the floor in the loss to Real Madrid.
And as he admitted in the post-game press conference, such a performance isn’t only unfitting for a contender, but nowhere near to a playoff-caliber team.
Here are his post-game press conference comments on:
Real Madrid‘s victory:
“It was obvious that Real Madrid was better and I have to congratulate them; they played a good game and deserved to win. We had only one quarter in the game when we tried to come back and actually managed to come to the 3-point deficit but, overall, Madrid deserved the W.”
Improvement and the home-court advantage target:
“We were very bad today. We were not at the level we are supposed to be to compete, so congratulations to them. When the league starts, you have several goals. The first goal is to stay healthy and be in shape as soon as possible. Obviously, we have a new team. We have some new additions that have to work together and go through wins and losses, through trips, meetings, analysis, criticism… in order to grow up as a group. To talk right now about [getting home-court advantage in the playoffs], the way we played today, we don’t belong between the best eight. Talking about the future, that’s too far away. I think that the target for all 16 teams should be qualifying to the playoffs; that’s the first thing. Last year, the EuroLeague showed us that Fenerbahce won a well-deserved title without the home-court advantage in the playoffs. I am not saying that we are not chasing the home-court advantage. None of those teams will say that we are not chasing that, but this is a process that you need to build on.
CSKA‘s performance:
“We scored 69 points today; this is my fourth year with the team and I don’t remember to have that bad night with 17 turnovers, 5 assists, winning the battle on rebounds, having such poor shooting percentages, threes and twos, in such a game. You need to make shots. Of course, how are we going to have assists if Chacho is creating, Nando is creating, my spread guys are not making shots, or we are not making free throws, especially in the first half? It is a process. Talking about the top four is not realistic for us right now. We have to talk about how we are going to live the next day, the next practice.”