Cedevita Zagreb-UNICS Kazan

Cedevita Zagreb-UNICS Kazan 66-87 (13-22, 30-47, 55-67)

Partial scores: 5' 9-9, 10' 13-22, 15' 17-35, 20' 30-47, 25' 37-58, 30' 55-67, 35' 60-72, 40' 66-87

Boxscore on:

Cedevita starts with Draper, Wright, Bazdaric, Rudez, Vukusic while UNICS answers with Popovic, Lyday, McCarty, Veremeenko, Lampe. The first basket is of Draper, and Rudez starts well with 5 points for the 7-5 Zagreb. Draper early commits the 2nd foul of his game, but stays on the floor. Kazan tries to give many balls to Lampe but make some turnovers, when Cedevita plays a simplier game with many 3pt shots. Cedevita is too aggressive on defense (Vukusic makes 3 fouls in 7') and Kazan goes on 13-9 relying on FT shots. 15-9 by Lyday and 1st timeout of the game. It's USA time with Wright and Edwards bringing the score on 15-13 and Lyday scoring a 3pt shot from his dribble for the +5 Kazan with Minard that before dunks the 20-13 on fastbreak and after scores the 22-13 on 1vs1. The quarter ends with a traveling violation of Wright, and Cedevita seems in a bad day of his backcourt players.

The second quarter starts with a 1/2 of Edwards and a 3pt shot of Lyday (12) for the 25-14, but Cedevita continues to struggle from the 3pt line, while Kazan scores again from the 3pt line with Popovic. 33-14 at 14' and the fans of Cedevita are pretty silent. Lyday, the MVP of this game, goes on the bench on 37-19 (16') with Lampe, and Cedevita tries a reaction with Rudez (39-24, 10 points of the croatian bigman) and Vukusic, but Kazan comes back to a big margin with two consecutive 3pt shots of Popovic for the 45-26. A huge two-handed dunk of McCarty fixes the result on 47-28 before that Rudez finishes the quarter with a nice drive. 30-47 at the half time.

The second half starts with the same starting fives of 1st half, and like the 1st half the first basket is of Draper. Kazan doesn't stop to control the game and reaches the +20 with a 3pt shot of Lyday for the 54-34 of 23'. Bazdaric keeps Cedevita alive with two 3pt shots for the 58-40, and on 60-42 a flagrant foul can give a big help to Cedevita to come back in the game; the Croatian team scores 3 points on the action and after the block of Petrovic on Popovic, Cedevita scores the -12 with a 3pt shot of Bazdaric. But a 3pt shot of Minard and a steal for the dunk on fastbreak of Lyday give Kazan a big margin again. Rudez scores the 67-52 with two free throws and Vukusic scores the -12 from the 3pt line. Draper misses the mid-range shot and then misses a buzzer after a turnover of Minard off his dribble and the third quarter ends on 67-55.

The last quarter starts with a couple of turnovers and the first score arrives after two minutes with Wright (67-57). Veremeenko misses the first FT shot of Unics after a 14/14 and Rudez scores the 68-59 from the dribble. 70-61, offensive foul of McCarty (good game for him) and timeout with the Cedevita's fans again noisy. Kazan doesn't score anymore, because of too many dribbles and too few passes and Popovic loses the ball and commits the foul that permits to Wright to go to te FT line for the -7, but the American player misses twice. Another couple of turnovers, then Popovic finds Lampe for a 3pt play that causes also the 5th foul of Vukusic. Croats do too many errors and Kazan can score from the FT line with Lyday and McCarty, 77-62 with 3'45" remaining is almost the end of the contest, which arrives with a shot of Lampe after a great assist of McCarty. The final is garbage time that ends on 87-66 with Kazan that will play the final tomorrow while Cedevita has to play the 3rd place final, but the Croatians end their run for the Eurocup without complaints because they played against a stronger team.

Interviews:

Aleksandar Petrovic (head coach, Cedevita Zagreb): "In the first quarter we missed many open shots and we demoralized. In the second half we went on the floor playing more defense, with more energy but we spent a lot of energy. Then we missed many opportunities to tie the game and they made some important scores and so they won. Congratulations to UNICS who is probably the best team there, congratulations to my guys who played well today and for the whole season, this experience was important for us to adapt to the physical game of European competitions and I hope that we will come back to repeat this season and something more. Edwards? He had an injury, he came back few days ago so he wasn't ready to play too much. We hope to have him and Zizic for the Croatian playoffs".

Zakhar Pashutin (head coach, UNICS Kazan: "Congratulations to my team for the game we played, now we have to focus on the final match, we will see which team will win the other semifinal and after we will analyze the tactics for the final, we don't have one style of play, we can adapt our play to the opponents. We played with our startes for many minutes, but I do not have concerns, we had to win the semifinal so we had to play with our best players".