"The opponent played much tougher": Popović and Evstafiev on the loss in Barnaul

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popović commented on the team’s road loss to Barnaul (77:73) in the Round 19 game of the FONBET Super League regular season.

— First of all, congratulations to Barnaul on the win. We had a poor shooting percentage today — very poor efficiency. Aside from free throws, our percentages were very low across the board. In the first half it was decent, but in the second half both our two-point and three-point shooting percentages dropped. So today we practically failed to score easy points. It’s always tough to play here, regardless of Barnaul’s position in the standings. They played much tougher, and our response to that was poor.

Blue-White-Sky Blues forward Egor Evstafiev also shared his thoughts on the game.

— It’s always hard to play against them. Barnaul also has a young team, and they run the floor well. Everything seemed to be working for us in the first half, but we had a terrible third quarter. Speaking for myself, I didn’t play my best game — I want to apologize to the guys and to the coach for that. After two losses, we’ll work on our mistakes. We need to bounce back at home in the game against Temp-SUMZ.