Alex Poythress: "We're not gonna be leading every game at halftime"

In an interview for Zenit-TV the St. Petersburg team’s center Alex Poythress analyzed the final moments of the game against UNICS (76:79), where the team had a real chance to tie the score and push the match into overtime. The player shared his thoughts on the interrupted winning streak as well as the upcoming home game this Sunday. Tickets for the game against Uralmash are available at tickets.bc-zenit.com.

— Alex, it was a very tough game with a lot of ups and downs. What do you think?

— It's a tough game. Anytime we play UNICS, Loko and CSKA, it's going to be a tough game, but I'm still proud of everybody, how we fought to the end. We fought through adversity. We had a chance, we had two chances at the end to tie it, to go to overtime. We just didn't make the shots. You got to live with those looks, and now we just look forward to Uralmash on Sunday.

— We had a chance for a comeback in the very end. What didn’t work out?

— We just missed the two shots at the end. We were down maybe seven or eight something like that. We got some stops, we hit some big shots, we got a steal and then Dwayne had a good look, we got the rebound, Omari had a good look. Bit sometimes you miss the shots.

— What were the words of the head coach when the gap reached double digits?

— He was talking about what we had to fix on defense and offense. It's gonna be like that sometime throughout the year we're not gonna be leading every game at halftime. This year some games will be down and we just gotta fight and proud of my guys.

— Is it difficult to realize that the winning streak would is finished?

— Not difficult at all like we were gonna lose at some point I think the media was more so talking about the 12 game winning streak than we were. We just take one game at a time so we're now we're just minus one now we get back in the winning column.

— Dwayne's nose was smashed, but he bravely continued to fight. How important was the D-factor tonight?

— Dwayne's really important for us, he's our main scorer, he's one of our best players on the team. When he's hot we gotta keep feeding him and he scores the ball for us he did his job today. Some of us didn't do our job you know. We must fight harder.

— Our next opponent is Uralmash. What do you expect from the Sunday's game?

— It's gonna be a tough game again. Every game we play in the VTB is tough. But we gotta come together as a team, practice these next couple of days and try to get back and win.

— You look exhausted. How do you feel?

— I mean, yeah, I'm a little tired today. You know, it was a good game. You know, a good, hot, fark game. But, you know what I mean, that's the job. I'll take a shower, rest up tonight and be ready tomorrow.