Georgy Zhbanov: "It feels great, but none of this would have happened without my teammates"

The MVP of the 2025 Kondrashin and Belov Cup Georgy Zhbanov shared his emotions about winning the tournament and receiving the individual award. In the final match against Kazan’s UNICS (89:71), the Blue-White-Sky Blues forward scored 25 points, along with 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

— Georgy, congratulations on winning the final and the MVP award. What are your first impressions?

— It’s even a bit overwhelming to talk about this, because it’s my first MVP award in professional basketball. It feels great, but none of this would have happened without my teammates. I’m very grateful to them for finding me at the right moments. And I didn’t let them down.

— How important was it to get today’s victory in front of your fans?

— Of course, it’s very important to win in front of our fans in a home friendly cup. Plus, we played against my former team, so the motivation was doubled.

— Didn’t you feel that UNICS came out today extremely fired up?

— Yes, that’s Perasovic’s style. They always play with energy, fight tooth and nail, press aggressively. And let’s give them credit: they were missing four of their key players and still fought hard. So thanks to them for the battle — but we move on.

— Can we say this has been the most intense game of the preseason so far?

— Probably, yes. With all those swings: sometimes they were ahead, sometimes we were. Yes, I’d say this was the most intense game so far. But I think the toughest one awaits us in Belgrade, in front of Partizan’s fans. It’ll be very interesting to play there. I’ve dreamed about it for a long time. I think we’ll have even more exciting games there.

— What did the coach say at halftime? After all, in the third quarter you managed to find your game.

— Personally, the coach didn’t say anything to me. We just went over the mistakes we made in the first half and fixed them. Simple as that.

— And the most pleasant question: how will you spend your long-awaited day off, and will you follow Slovenia’s national team and our coach at EuroBasket?

— Yes, of course, I follow Slovenia’s team. I cheer for them so that our head coach can go as far as possible in the tournament. And I’ll spend my day off with my wife, in a family way.