"We could have easily won in regulation": Popovic and Samukhin on the victory in Tambov

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popovic shared his thoughts after the away overtime victory over Tambov with a score of 87:89.

— It was definitely an interesting game. I congratulate Tambov on a good game, but it seems to me we could have easily won in regulation time. Just 2-3 consecutive mistakes that we made gave Tambov a chance to win in overtime. We got lucky in overtime; we made two or three offensive rebounds after missed shots. But I’ll say it again: we should have won easily in regulation with a 7-8-10 point difference. Unfortunately, our team is so young this year. It’s a good team, but young. So sometimes the players make not the best decisions.

— In your opinion, at what moment was the initiative lost?

— We started well today, then relaxed, especially on defense, where we made a couple of mistakes. In the second quarter, Tambov was completely better, but we managed to catch up in the last 3-4 minutes and finish the half with a positive point differential. I think we controlled the fourth quarter, everything was fine except for the last two minutes.

The Blue-White-Sky Blues center Vladislav Samukhin analyzed the most crucial moments of the past match.

— Vladislav, what went off plan today and how did you finish this match?

— We created a problem for ourselves, you could say. By the end, the game was already ours, we should have taken it. But we lost a lot of rebounds, allowed the opponent to grab them.

— What made Tambov difficult for you today?

— Difficult? Their physical play. They attacked our basket a lot, grabbed rebounds, hit shots from long range. And most of our mistakes just made the situation worse.

— What was your focus today?

— We planned to play from our shooting. We have a lot of shooters on our team.