"We just lacked rotation": Popovic and Rodionov speak after loss to Khimki

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popovic summed up the first game of the Fonbet Super League bronze series against Khimki (80:68).

We had a small rotation today, but overall we played decently. There were mistakes, which are due to the heavy workload and the fatigue — 6-7 players were on the court for almost the entire game. Khimki is an experienced, solid team, and of course they took full advantage of our mistakes. It’s okay, it's 0-1 in the series. We hope to have a slightly different lineup on May 5. Congratulations to Khimki on the win, we’ll see each other in a couple of days.

Blue-whites forward Dmitry Rodionov also shared his thoughts following the start of the third-place series.

It was a tough game. Some of our guys who play for the youth team weren’t able to attend the match. Overall, we played pretty good basketball. We just lacked rotation and made some costly mistakes at the end. But it was a good game for us. With this lineup, we played well. Now we need to gather our strength for the next game.