"We will analyze the game and see where our mistakes were": Popoviс and Akhmedov after the defeat to Novosibirsk

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popovic commented on the 86:97 loss to Novosibirsk in the second home game of the 2024/25 Fonbet Super League quarterfinals.

— If we concede 97 points at home, it means the game didn’t go as planned. That’s for sure. Especially on defense, things didn’t go the way they should have today. Novosibirsk deserved the win. We had a chance. We started well, opened the game normally, but then we had a poor second and third quarter. Maybe we thought it would be easy. In the first game, they scored 76 points against us, and now it's 97. That’s twenty more. We scored enough today. Our offense wasn’t great, but we still put up a decent number of points. However, our defense was terrible, and that’s why we got this result. The series is 1:1, and now we head to Novosibirsk. We’ll see how we perform there.

Zenit-2 captain Elkhan Akhmedov also shared his thoughts on the match.

— We lost the battle in every aspect, made a lot of defensive mistakes. But the series is still on, we’re playing until three wins. We’re simply heading to Novosibirsk to take the lead — nothing more.

— What was the key moment that allowed the opponent to pull away in the score?

— We couldn’t get stops or find our rhythm — our fast breaks, our ability to run and score easy points. That didn’t work today. But we will analyze the game and see where our mistakes were. We’ll try to correct them in the next match.