Aleksander Sekulic: "We found a way to overcome difficulties"

Zenit head coach Aleksander Sekulic summed up the results of the home match against Avtodor (90:67), which took place in the 1st round of the VTB United League regular season.

— I think it was the first game against a team that is very well coached. We knew what we were facing, but the thing is that we believed in what we were doing and at the end it paid off for us in terms of a good result. Especially the second part we had a better ball movement, a little bit better defense. What I'm happy about is that also there were some, let's say, tough moments for us in the game where we couldn't score and the opponent was scoring. We found a way to overcome these difficulties and become the team that take advantage of the situations and what defense of the opponent is giving us.

— In the third quarter, Zenit made a breakthrough of 18 points from the opponent. Why did this happen in the third quarter and what contributed to it?

— First of all, the opponent came back to only one point in the third quarter due to their good offensive performance of Edwards. We were a little bit nervous, couldn't make shots. Once we started making stops on defense, helped us to run a little bit more to fast break, a little bit be more precise on the offense and of course make shots.

— Which of your team's players are you most satisfied with today? And who, maybe, even exceeded your expectations?

— You know after wins like this I hate to talk about individuals. There are guys who can play much better and there are guys who perform the way we wanted to perform. It's always also about the opponent, how they play defense. For example our guards were forced to pass the ball, it was difficult for them to do some creation with the ball. So we had to figure it out and that's why I want to talk about more about the team. Because when we found out how is the best way to attack this kind of defense they played, the team effort came on top.