Andrey Vorontsevich: "Good defense led to offense"

Zenit's forward Andrey Vorontsevich shared his emotions after the home victory over Pari Nizhny Novgorod (94:79) in the 25th round of the VTB United League.

— Congratulations to everyone on the win. Thanks to those who supported us. We understood it wouldn't be easy. Nizhny always plays an aggressive style of basketball. In the first 15 minutes, everything was going really well for them. They scored 40 points against us, but then we became more aggressive on defense. We also made some mistakes, but we started moving the ball, sharing it with our teammates, and as a result, good defense led to offense. We began scoring a lot, including open shots. Once again, everything started with defense.

— What happened to the team in the fourth quarter when the lead shrank significantly?

— Maybe some players wanted to score their points, but we missed some shots and didn’t convert. I'll say it again, Nizhny is not an easy opponent — they play good basketball. They’re quick and persistent. Naturally, if we had made all our shots, the score would’ve been closer to 200, but things turned out the way they did.

— Would you say the team relaxed a bit?

— I don’t think we relaxed. It didn’t look that way from the outside. It’s just that when we drove to the basket, we didn’t always manage to convert, and we missed some open shots. I wouldn’t say we relaxed, but I’ll repeat: we weren’t playing against a weak team, but a very worthy opponent.