Aleksander Sekulic: "I believe that we will play much better in upcoming games"

Zenit head coach Aleksander Sekulic commented on the home victory over Igokea (103:72) as part of the WINLINE Basket Cup. The Blue-White-Sky Blues coach also answered questions about the atmosphere at this tournament's matches, Andre Roberson's condition, and the tactic with two big men.

— First of all, big, big thank you for the fans that came to support us again in a game that was, again, as everyone, every game important. We played against a team that is playing good basketball. They know what they want. We knew that we are getting into this game as a better team. But these things you have to show on the court.

— Your predecessor, Xavi Pascual, took some tactics from other sports. I would like to know, maybe you also take from other sports, such as football, hockey, some tactics from your own tactics and schemes?

— Team sports have one thing in common is to find a way to team to play together. There are ways you want to use some things from other sports let's say American football or handball, football but the main thing is that we need to find a way how the team works together to understand the qualities they have and to make a synergy of a team that can always find a way to cover the mistakes and to expose the great things from each player.

If I compare basketball to other sports, there is one thing that is very unique in basketball. I'm talking about team sports. Is that all other team sports they have let's say if you talk about basket as a target I have a horizontal target and all other sports have vertical targets so it is a volleyball is a football or other sports. Which makes basketball unique so you need to figure out how to play in a contact and at the same time to score with the finesse.

— Сoach of Igokea said after the game that the music during the game, the atmosphere, it knocked him down a little and required additional emotions to shout to the team. How was it for you? How familiar was it? What was it like? How do you feel about the music during the game?

— It is a little bit different, personally I don’t want to comment the things that are going around match, talking about other media things. I try to get focused on the things that I can control. This is the team that I lead. For me it's amazing organization of this competition. Even though if we take it like a secondary after VTB League but it's very well organized, amazingly organized and it's something new. We try to figure out how to play good basketball even though the circumstances are a little bit different but not something that we cannot play with.

— Andre Roberson has not played for more than two months. How is his health now? And when should we expect him to return?

— It's a good question for me also. I hope he's going to start after New Year. This is the plan we have, but it's a very, very difficult situation for us. Hopefully he's going to be ready for the games in the New Year.

— How do you like the interaction between Luka Samanic and Andrey Martiuk?

— Right now on team it was a little bit different today because we missed Noah but yeah this is one of the ideas we have to play two bigs together. I think we can play much better especially Andrey and Luca, I think we can use them even more. But also it takes time a little bit. They need to get to know each other, they need to figure out how to play and to find the chemistry not only between them. I mean not only between Luca and Andre but also other guys and during the season with the new guys sometimes it's a little bit painful but I think we are from game to game improving playing much better and I believe that we will play much better in upcoming games.