By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Mike James scored 18 of his 28 points in the first ten minutes of action and CSKA Moscow rolled on the way to the 99-86 win over Khimki Moscow Region.
The hosts of the local derby in the Russian capital were locked on from the first minute and behind James’ crescendo, they couldn’t be denied. After all, James had a solid support cast with Will Clyburn leading the way with 21 points.
“It was good”, said James after the game. “I just tried to start off aggressive. Coach asked me to do that a little more, so I have been trying to early on. I think we came ready to play today. We were focused on defense for the most part and we stuck to our game plan, moved the ball and I think we had a good game.”
Khimki got 25 points from Alexey Shved, who shot 6/1 threes and 1/6 two-pointers. Thanks to one of his long-range shots, the guests made it a six-point game (55-49) at the start of the second half, but couldn’t get any closer. Devin Booker scored 18 points, Janis Timma added 12 and Dairis Bertans 11 for the losing side.
Easy ride
CSKA Moscow had a solid 29-20 lead after the first quarter which was rounded-up to ten points at halftime (54-44). Coach Dimitris Itoudis players’ had a 16-point advantage entering the last period (76-60) and had everything under control until the end.
To be exact, Khimki cut the lead to seven (84-77) with four minutes left, only for Darrun Hilliard – who scored in total 13 points – and James to answer with a quick 5-0 run.
CSKA managed to control the boards and that proved to be the key to the game. The “Army team” grabbed 38 rebounds, with 18 of them being offensive, against just eight offensive boards of Khimki.
That was more than crucial as coach Dimitris Itoudis explained: “I think that we controlled the game. We won the boards; we had 18 offensive boards. If you combine the first and third quarters, we outscored them by 15. It’s not easy to do against such a talented team, And this is plus-15 in two quarters. But every time we made a mistake and they had the ball on offense, they either scored three-pointers – on a lot of our turnovers they scored three-pointers. You can see they shot the ball pretty good from the arc.”
According to Khimki coach Rimas Kurtinaitis, his players also lost key individual duels: “It was a great game by CSKA Moscow. As I said before the game, CSKA is maybe not so focused on the VTB League games, but in EuroLeague games they know how to play. They have a very good level of players. Today it was all micro-fights against Mike James with Dairis Bertans. Today the CSKA victory was because of our bad defense.”
Photo credit: EuroLeague