Vince Hunter: "I don't think CSKA is better than us"

Zenit’s center Vince Hunter commented on the victory over Pari Nizhny Novgorod (68:85) in the 16th round of the VTB United League regular season. In addition, Vince spoke about the atmosphere in the team after 9 consecutive wins and shared his expectations for the home game with CSKA, which will be held on December 7. 

— Well, first of all, Vince we congrats with the win, the ninth in a row, so what are your thoughts about this performance of Zenit and of yourself?

— It was a nice tough game for us to come back to. Nizhny is not an easy team to beat, especially when they are at home, so it was a good game for us to come back and try to work out the break off, because we had a little bit of a long break. So I think we have some things to work on, especially to start of the game. But I think we finished it pretty good, playing good defense and playing good basketball on both ends. And we came in here and we got what we wanted, which was a good win. I don't know exactly how much we won by, but it was definitely a good win and to build our confidence to roll into next week against CSKA.

— Six rebounds. Are you happy with yourself? We saw that you were laughing and smiling more often than usually.

— When we're playing good basketball, it's easier for me to smile. So when we're winning, then that's when I'm probably going to smile the most. If it's a tough game and we're losing, then I got to keep my serious face. I'm okay with us winning, but me personally, six rebounds, I can get a few more than that. A few times I've been a little lazy. I probably could have got 10 rebounds this game but a couple times I was lazy so I got to work on that and I'm still trying to work myself back in shape from the break just like everybody so hopefully next game it'd be a little bit better.

— It's ninth in a row. Tell us about the atmosphere in a locker.

— Oh yeah it's nine in a row and you know we're just trying to figure it out each game get better and better each game and hopefully we then got good enough to going into CSKA with a good confidence and confidence in each other. So we get a W against them and then you know just continue to get better in these games until playoffs because that's when it really matters.

— What are your thoughts about CSKA. You know you still have one week to recover to prepare and we remember that tough loss in Moscow and some people say they're almost perfect. So what thoughts are running through your mind when you think about CSKA.

— Well they're definitely not perfect and it definitely was a tough loss to us I think the both games that we lost we shouldn't have lost. So that that hits harder than you know sometimes the team is better than you but I don't think CSKA is better than us and I don't think we should have lost at day those. We just got to use that as motivation, uh, going to play them again. Like, I know they're probably, I mean, they're the favorite every year. Of course, it's CSKA. So they're the favorite every year. So it's gonna be a lot of media on them and a lot of things being said about them. But I don't think they're perfect and I don't think they're better than us. And we, we probably should be undefeated right now. But you know, we lost a couple of games and I think it helped us learn also. So we just got to see how good we can play and how we can play together against CSKA next week.