Today Tsmoki-Minsk hosted the leader of the VTB United League UNICS Kazan at the home court «Minsk-Arena». The game ended with the defeat of the Dragons - 72:92 (12:26, 17:15, 13:31, 30:20).
Starting fives
Tsmoki-Minsk: Angelo Warner, Jason Clark, Yauheni Beliankou, Stefan Jankovic, Vadzim Stubeda.
UNICS: Vyacheslav Zaitcev, Dmitry Uzinskii, Mario Hezonja, Jarrell Brantley, John Brown III.
Game scenario
Unlike the Kazan team, who is closely involved in the Euroleague, and therefore has an excellent playing tone, Tsmoki-Minsk played their last game on November 17 - almost three weeks ago. Some kind of imbalance in the collective actions of the Dragons was immediately felt at the start of the game. Rostislav Vergun's charges could not score for 6.5 minutes, during this time they made 8 ineffective attacks. The guests scored 17 points in this period. Vadzim Stubeda broke the vicious circle of failures, and the team seemed to have a second wind. They spent the rest of the starting quarter more successfully than their Russian rival - 12 : 9.
The successful ending instilled our basketball players the confidence that it is possible to fight on equal terms with a dangerous opponent. Moreover, within 3 minutes Tsmoki-Minsk made a 7 : 0 micro-breakthrough, Stefan Yankovich scored 5 points. The gap with UNICS was reduced to -7 (19:26), what fueled optimism. Alas, the Kazan team quickly cooled it down with a return jerk 15 : 4. Shackled by extremely tough tutelage, our guys were completing combinations with great difficulty - more often they earned points from the free throw line. Tsmoki-Minsk left to the break with a deficit of 12 points. And if the starting failure had not happened, the mood would have been much better.
The very experienced Velimir Perasovic in the locker room, of course, tried to warn his players against high spirits. Indeed, during the current championship there were even worse comebacks. That is why UNICS came out with a readiness to repeat the opening blitzkrieg in the second half. And they almost succeeded. In five minutes, the guests added the same 17 points to their score box, however, this time the hosts managed to answer with 4.
Notable that in the final period, the VTB United League debutant, 18-year-old Kirill Vaskautsou, entered the court, and even was managed to score his first points, for which he received the approval of the audience and the coach. However, the appearance of a young basketball player did not mean that Rostislav Vergun threw out the white flag. On the contrary, even when the distance between the rivals exceeded 20, the coach urged his guys to fight for every goal. They tried their best and won the final period (30:20), but the class and performance players from club, which are quite successful in the Euroleague, were objectively higher. And this was logically reflected in the final figures on the scoreboard.
Prominent roles
Guard Jason Clark, despite not very successful actions of Tsmoki-Minsk in the attack, showed positive statistics, albeit with a delay. The American scored 4 of 6 2-pointers, 2 of 4 3-pointers, 6 of 7 free throws and finished the game with EFR of 14.
Rostislav Vergun, head coach:
Firstly, I want to thank the fans, those few who find the desire and energy to support us. Probably the team is far from being in its best condition and shows not the best basketball. Today we met with a very solid opponent and had a very good chance to test ourselves. Unfortunately, one of our leaders, Zhenya Beliankou, joined the team only yesterday after an illness. We lacked somewhere his aggression and activity. Undoubtedly, the pause did not help us much, since we weren’t together for a long period of time and someone received a large amount of workload for the national team, and someone was out of playing practice for 3 weeks. This is probably not the main reason. The reason is quality of the our game. Too many losses. When we start the game 0-17 while making 9 losses, many of which are absolutely not forced, we should not look for the reason in anyone but ourselves. Congratulations to your opponent on your victory. We will be preparing for the next game.
Scoring leaders
Tsmoki-Minsk: Jason Clark 20 PTS, Yauheni Beliankou - 10 + 2 REB, Stefan Jankovic 15 + 5 REB.
UNICS: Marco Spissu - 14 PTS + 4 AST + 3 REB, Artem Klimenko 14 + 2 REB, Jarrell Brantley - 13 + 7 REB + 3 STL, Vyacheslav Zaitcev - 12 + 6 AST + 4 REB + 3 STL, Mario Hezonja - 12 + 5 REB + 3 STL.
Next game
The next VTB United League game Tsmoki-Minsk will play on December 18 in Krasnoyarsk against Yenisey. The game will start at 11.00 Belarusian time.