By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The duo of Will Clyburn and Sergio Rodriguez played also for the missing injured duo of Nando De Colo and Corry Higgins. As a result, CSKA Moscow cruised to the 107-85 win over Gran Canaria which was also missing Albert Oliver, Luke Fischer, Eulis Baez, Luke Nelson, Nikola Radicevic and Anzejs Pasecniks.
The host team registered its best offensive performance of the season, despite missing its two top scorers.
Clyburn set the tone early and finished the night with 17 points and seven rebounds, “Chacho” added 18 points and eight assists, Alec Peters scored 15 and the “Army Team” led from wire to wire.
“Congratulations to my players. It was obvious we were dominant and we played better, we were a better team tonight and we deserved to win“, CSKA‘s coach Dimitris Itoudis said after the game.
Simply put, CSKA was better, shooting 75,6% in two-pointers and 46,7% in threes. You can’t do much against that kind of numbers as Gran Canaria couldn’t keep up. To be exact the score was 29-20 after the first period, the lead went up to 14 points at half time (59-49) and then to 19 at the end of the third (83-64).
As losing coach Victor Garcia admitted: “CSKA was scoring with great percentages during the whole game and that led them to a huge win. We were not at the level we had to be on defense to win. We were very good on offense, scoring with good percentages, but we allowed some easy baskets in some situations.”
In total five players of the hosts scored in double-digits, three more had eight points each and teenager Alexander Khomenko scored his first EuroLeague points.
Marcus Erikkson and Kim Tillie with 13 points each were the top scorers of “GranCa”.
Photo credit: EuroLeague