Aleksander Sekulic: "These games are tough to play for players and coaches"

Zenit head coach Aleksander Sekulic summed up the results of the home victory over Samara (95:56) and answered questions from reporters during the post-match press conference.

— These games are always, for coaches and players, tough to play because you know that on paper you're a better team, everybody expects you to win, so you need to come out on the court to show and to play the correct way. If you don't, you can have serious problems because i believe they can play good basketball they will for sure have some wins and they showed against some good teams they were in sometimes unlucky and they were in sometimes in the game for 30-35 minutes.

And they had some games where they held the match for 30-35 minutes and showed good basketball. Therefore, it was very important for us to approach this match and play the right basketball. Our goal was to limit their offensive game, hold their best players, which I think we did pretty well.

— Did you plan to use rotation?

— We had this in mind. We were planning g rotation regardless the score. We have some goals, some problems we want to overcome.

— What can you say about Samanic's contribution to the success of the team and has he become one of the leaders?

— He has the quality, the ability. Talent. We just need to find a way how to use him fully. It's not easy doing this in the middle of the season, but I think so far all the team, players, him, the staff, we are working hard to help him and to help him be part of the team with his full potential.

— What is the reason for the absence of Georgy Zhbanov?

— He is sick. He got ill after this tough trip, so he stayed home.

— Today there was a historical achievement. Zenit-2 went to the quarterfinal of Russian Cup, I would like to ask you, do you follow games of Zenit-2?

— Yes. I follow. I contact coach, they have players that helped us already in the main team. Krivykh and Dulkay were with us. Zenit-2 is a very important part of this organization because we have players who can be developed there, who can gain confidence there and to have always a way to develop players.