"Good defense led to plenty of easy points and fast breaks": Popović and Chikishev on the win over Dynamo

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popović summed up the victorious home game of the FONBET Super League regular season, in which the Blue-White-Sky Blues defeated Ufa’s Dynamo 89:70.

— The guys did a great job today. If you compare the game against Yugra and today’s game, our concentration was one hundred percent, and from the very start we made far fewer mistakes on defense. So once again, congratulations to the team: today they had the right mindset and defensive focus. Good defense gave us a lot of easy points and fast breaks, and that naturally brought confidence. Basically, everything worked today. We beat a team that’s fighting for the very top, with strong and experienced players. It’s a big win for us.

Zenit-2 guard Dmitry Chikishev also commented on the successful result of today’s match.

— Today, compared to the game against Surgut, our concentration was much higher, and we also added another "big men". In the previous match we had only one center. The rotation was quite short, and because of that we lost the rebounding battle. In this game everything changed: we played well on the boards, executed well on offense, and overall showed a completely different performance compared to the game against Yugra. I don’t know what it’s connected to, but today we looked much better.

— Can we say that concentration played the key role?

— I think we managed to maintain our concentration throughout the entire game. In the first quarter, if I remember correctly, we finished with a 15-point lead or something close to that. And in the fourth quarter we also ended up at around "+20". So overall, we managed to keep the same level of focus, which allowed us to preserve the advantage we built in the first half.