Others on the stage

Today in Minsk “Spartak” had another match of the VTB United League Championship. Our team played with the Belarus champions, “Minsk-2006”, in the “Minsk-Arena” and won by a landslide — 88-66. In the absence of Patrick Beverley, Yotam Halperin, Lukas Mavrokefalidis and Viktor Keiru the game was made by the other members of “Spartak”, most of whom received more playing time than usual.

The starting line-up of “Spartak” put Janis Strelnieks, Aleksey Kotishevskiy, Valeriy Likhodey, Miha Zupan and Anatoliy Kashirov on the court.

Zupan and Kotishevskiy secured a 5 point lead for the Petersburg team in the first minutes of the match — 2-7. The home team soon was able to almost equalize the score — 15-17. But a Zavoruev's layup and 5 points scored by Sergeev towards the end of the period allowed “Spartak” to enter the first break ahead by 9 points — 15-24.

During the first two minutes of the second quarter Zozulin, Zavoruev and Dragicevic strengthened the position of “Spartak”, bringing our advantage up to +16 — 15-31.

The third quarter continued in the same spirit.

Three minutes to the end of the match Sergeev accurately shot from behind the arc, the margin became 20 points — 60-80. 3-points shoots of our team were successful on the whole today: Zupan and Zavoruev account for 4 accurate long-range hits each. During the last 90 seconds “Spartak” had Sergeev, Marinin, Zavoruev, Antipov and Kashirov on the court, and an Antipov's dunk brought the match to a conclusion. 88-66 — a victory for “Spartak”.

21 points and 7 rebounds were accumulated by Vladimir Dragicevic, 18 points in just over 18 minutes on the court were scored by Vasiliy Zavoruev. 16 points and 7 rebounds are by Miha Zupan. 12 points and 5 rebounds are by Aleksey Kotishevskiy. 11 points mark the game of Pavel Sergeev. Janis Strelnieks is credited with 8 assists.