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Photo: still image
Photo stop shooting
In unusual circumstances, Tomás Masiulis, who temporarily became Barcelona’s head coach after the failure in St. Petersburg, pointed out the reasons for the loss to club Zenit.
Man of the match
The Catalan club in Russia’s match in the fourth quarter had a 5-point lead, but the match ended in a 2:11 stretch and landed 70:74.
“Congratulations to Zenit for the victory. We started the game well, but in the second half we lost concentration both in attack and defense, and thus we allowed Zenit to return, said Masiulis. – I am happy with the way we played in defense in the last quarter, Zenit made pretty hard shots. Still, we didn’t show our team’s basketball in the third and fourth quarters. We tried to win the game playing one on one. I think that was the biggest problem. “
Masiulis temporarily took control of Barça after Šarūnas Jasikevičius fell ill with a coronavirus. Assistant head coach Darius Maskoliūnas also got infected with the virus on the team.
At that time, Zenit coach Xavi Pascual was satisfied with the victory due to unusual circumstances, since the Saint Petersburg club, according to the specialist, did not have four basketball players due to the coronavirus.
Artūras Gudaitis, Austin Hollins, Anton Pushkov, Dmitry Chvostov, Vladislav Trushkin and young Russian basketball player Maxim Karvanen did not play at the meeting.
Before the meeting, Zenit announced only two basketball players infected with the coronavirus: Austin Hollins and Anton Pushkov. It was not known until Gudaitis that he would not play in the match.
Barcelona FC Barcelona / Schedules
“It just came to our notice then. Especially for basketball players, because it has been a very difficult week, the last 24 hours have been very difficult, said Pascual. – We lost four basketball players due to coronavirus. It was difficult to control the situation, I did not rest. nothing after training in the morning, we await the results of the coronavirus. I am happy for all the players and the way they fought today.
In the second half of the game, we take some risks trying to control the situation. We knew it, but we couldn’t do anything else because we would have been fouled and we wouldn’t have been so confident about the end of the game.
In the last 5 minutes we were able to defend ourselves normally, control fouls and win these important matches. We do not play at the level that we could be. We can improve. All basketball players believed in victory and that is the most important thing. “
Barcelona will play Valencia on Tuesday next week in the Euroleague, and Athens’ Panathinaikos will be at home on Thursday.
Zenit will play both games away. On Tuesday, the team will meet with Baskonia and on Thursday with Valencia.
Match summary:
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