Xavi Pascual: "The fans helped us a lot"
Zenit head coach Xavi Pascual summed up the winning match against CSKA (81:77).
— First of all I have to start with one big thanks to all the fans that were here in the stadium. They helped us a lot and it was amazing to play with such atmosphere. Second, to congratulate the players. I think they deserve this win.
We were leading in the score almost all the game. Despite the fact that in the last quarter, in some situations, we could score under the basket and we didn't do it for different reasons, but more or less we had the control of the game until the last minute. In general, we were not effective in two points. Today we missed 2-3 actions in fast break, 2-3 actions when we passed the ball to the bigs to finish under the basket. So in two points we were not effective. But in general, our number of offensive rebounds and our number of turnovers, that we had only nine, keep the balance of the game.
And also now I wish all the best to football club, to the game that now all of us will watch, to all my friends of football to win today against Rubin Kazan.
— In recent games, Georgy Zhbanov has scored crucial shots and helped the team a lot. How does it feel to play without him at the end of the fourth quarter against CSKA?
— Yes, he made these four fouls and after that this technical foul by frustration because he became frustrated for the three points that he missed before. It was a human reaction but the referees considered that okay. For sure this action is not correct and it was a technical foul. And finally he took this fifth out and he couldn't play and of course we miss him. But all the players today, as Sergey Karasev said, they were in focus, they were fighting until the limit because we really wanted to win this game and we showed this to everybody.
— We know that CSKA is a very high quality team, but how difficult is it to make them make mistakes?
— Yeah, very difficult for sure. You have to be perfect tactically and also sometimes that all the players are humans and don't have the best day, so they expect for us the same, not to be perfect. Of course it's very difficult. It's a great team with very good organisation, with one coach who is doing a very good job. So it's a very difficult opponent but also us — we are not easy opponent. This is why this kind of games are so beautiful like playoff games and this is why I feel that every day we have more basketball supporters around Russia.
— In your opinion, is Zhbanov's technical foul a serious mistake? Will you talk to him about it?
— Zhora is the first who come to me and say sorry coach for my human reaction let's say. Zhora is an amazing guy, he's a hard worker, every day he's working incredibly. He's human like all of the players, they have full of emotion, sometimes they react, it's impossible. All of us, we are human, so just to be close to him, and as I said before, he's the first who comes to me and apologizes for the reaction.
— How important is it to take first place in the regular season before the start of the playoffs? Including from a psychological point of view.
First of all we didn’t win anything. In front of us we have four games and it’s going to be very difficult. After this emotions we have to prepare our mind to play against MBA. According to my experience, these games after a big win are very difficult to play, and after that we have two home games against two opponents that are very difficult like Uralmash and PARMA, and we will finish in Astana that they are much better in this moment. So, game by game, and we'll see what is going on.
