Eurocup. BC Khimki vs. Lietkabelis — 88-80 4 january 2017

In the first 2017 game BC Khimki at home scored a huge EuroCup Top 16 win over Lietkabelis Panevezys, Lithuania — 88-80 (23-18, 14-15, 28-20, 23-27). with 21 pts by Alexey Shved and 18 pts by Robbie Hummel and Nobel Boungou-Colo apiece. The next game our team will play in St Petersburg on Sunday, January 8, 2017 vs. Zenit. Tip-off at 19:00 msk.

BC Khimki: Shved (21 + 7 rebounds + 7 assists), Boungou-Colo (18 + 5 rebounds), Hummel (18 + 4 rebounds + 3 steals), Rowland (10 + 9 assists + 6 rebounds), Pullen (7), Ilnitskiy (4 + 6 rebounds), Sokolov (4), Monya (3 + 6 rebounds), Likhodey (3), Vyaltsev, Brown

Lietkabelis: Madgen (19 + 4 assists + 3 rebounds), Skucas (13 + 3 rebounds), Williams (11 + 5 assists), K. Lavrinovic (10 + 8 rebounds), Tarolis (8 + 4 assists + 3 rebounds), Janavicius (7 + 3 assists), Leonavicius (6), Galdikas (3 + 3 rebounds), Rinkunas (3), Lukauskis.

POST-GAME

Kazys Maksvytis, Lietkabelis Panevezys head coach:

“I’m satisfied with the way my players fought, but not happy with the quality of our game. Both Khimki and us had a break that influenced the game quality. We tried not to allow easy points after Khimki’s offensive rebounds and quick transition that our opponent does well. These factors didn’t allow us to have a better result. I think we lacked concentration and some luck”.

Lorenzo Williams, Lietkabelis Panevezys guard:

“Both teams fought hard. We knew it was gonna be a tough game playing here in Moscow, but we felt like we had been prepared to play as we had a lot of games that prepared us for this against Zalgiris and Lietuvos Rytas in the Lithuanian League. I just feel like tonight we came up a little bit short. We could have done a better job rebounding the ball. That was the main difference. Overall, we are not happy, but we still have a home game and we think we can do better next time. We came here with a lot of confidence. We got some confidence from the wins in our local league and from the EuroCup first round also. If we stay together and do it hard, we can play with anybody”.

Dusko Ivanovic, BC Khimki head coach:

“Very important win because we played our first EuroCup Top 16 game. It’s true that we finished the regular season in first place in our group, but now it’s a 0-0 situation and all the teams are equal. So it was very important to start win a win. Lietkabelis plays very well and with discipline; they have players with experience. But tonight we showed really good defense during some minutes; that was a key reason for our win”.

Robbie Hummel, BC Khimki forward:

“I think we had some good shots and missed some. Our defense wasn’t great as we gave up some easy ones from them. It was a tough game, but we were really good and moved the ball well finding each other. In the end Lietkabelis made some tough shots, but I think we played pretty good defense to stop them and block their shots. We’ve been off for a while since our last game and probably lost some rhythm that was tough. We came out pretty good in the first and third quarters, but struggled in the second and fourth. It was good to be back in ”.