Sergey Karasev: "We want to prove to everyone why we finished the regular season in first place"

Zenit captain Zenit Sergey Karasev summed up the match against PARMA (105:90). The forward noted the high level of play from the opponent and shared his thoughts on the victory in the regular season of the VTB United League.

— First of all, I want to give credit to PARMA for their great game and a wonderful fight. We understood that this game was also very important for them in terms of the standings. That’s why they fought until the very last second. As for the game itself, we allowed them to score too much in the first half. 50 points is absolutely not our level.

Yes, they have quality foreign players, including Samson, who scored 29 points today. But we need to do a much better job on defense, especially one-on-one, control our rebounds, and also control their fast breaks. In the first half, we didn’t manage to do that, but in the second half, we came out more aggressively. We moved the ball, and thanks to our defense, our desire, and the ball movement, we probably won.

A big thank you to the fans for their support. They’ve been supporting us throughout the season, and it’s really nice. Sometimes there is full house, sometimes there are still a lot of spectators, so a huge thank you to them. I hope that in the playoff games we’ll see a lot of people cheering us on.

— You mentioned Samson Ruzhentsev, who scored 29 points. Not many can do that against Zenit. Was there any personal issue with him?

— Samson is a good player, and he has quality. When people start to feel the game, when they are allowed to feel the game from the very start... This is not the third or fourth division, where people can’t score. Here, absolutely everyone can rack up points. When we don’t do our job and let a player get into the game right away, anyone can score and feel the rhythm of the game. He scored many tough shots. That’s why we need to be more aggressive and focused on defense from the very beginning.

— Sergey, congratulations on winning the regular season. It turns out that for the last 4 years, the team that wins the regular season doesn’t end up taking the title. What’s your take on that?

— Doesn’t take the title? I don’t know... These are all signs, rumors. First of all, winning the regular season gives us the advantage of home-court throughout the entire playoff bracket. We don’t look at what happened before. We live in the present and look to the future, preparing for each opponent, for each game as if it were the last game of the season. That’s why this year, we want to break that streak and prove to everyone why we finished the regular season in first place.