Donald Kairys put a finger on the defense: “Numbers too cruel” / News

Photo: BNS

Photo: BNS

Photo: BNS

Photo: BNS

Photo: BNS

Vilnius “Rytas” (0-1) started the FIBA ​​Champions League season with a failure, and after the Athens team “Peristeri” (1-0) scored 106 points, Donaldas Kairys repeatedly mentioned the bad defense of the students after the game.

The Greek club scored 19 points out of 31 (61 percent) and 18 three points out of 30 (60 percent) in the encounter, with Steven Gray only scoring 39 points (3/5 doubles, 10/13 trit, 3/4 of penalty).

– Steven Gray scored 10 points out of three of 13 and scored 39 points. Who was responsible for his performance?
– You know, and with a bad defense you need to be able to shoot 10 of 13 triples. It was his night. Surely our defense didn’t work out what we were preparing for, and when we changed that and started to change in the fourth quarter, I think it was a little better. But that was not enough.

– Chris McCullough scored 22 points, but how much does the team suffer with their defense?
– It is not the biggest hole in our defense, there are more. We still have a hard time putting them all on. But we are working to achieve it. And for Chris, he hasn’t played at that level, in such organized basketball, so he’s instinctively doing a lot so far. He helped us with the points. Yes, he made mistakes on defense, he didn’t change anywhere. But then it got better. Only that he got tired faster than the other teammates because he joined later and was without a team for a while because he was suspended. You may not always be able to play as many minutes as you would like.

– Chris looked good today in attack. Is it changing due to disciplinary infractions and warnings?
– No need to talk too much about Chris’s points. He was hit by four triples, but he missed other shots, hit 2 of 7 triples, and it costs us, it hurts. We are watching very closely and seeing what we can get out of it. He is on trial until December 1 and we are watching him closely.

Man of the match

– Mindaugas Girdžiūnas looked successful at the start of the match, but then fell silent. Have the opponents adapted to your game?
– Mindė started very well. I’d like more of that game from him. So far some of our players have no stability. And Demetrius Jackson does very good stretches and then falls, losing balls. I don’t think we need to lose 16 balls. There is not a large number here, but here there was no such defense as with “Žalgiris”, when we are strangled from line to line. They were just poor quality solutions and it cost us a lot, we got easy points from our competitors.

– Wasn’t it difficult to prepare for the match because the opponents played only one match?
– We had enough information, everything was fine, we just did everything in non-contact training. Of course, we wish we had more days to prepare, but as much as there is, there is still a lot to work out. We lacked energy and toughness rather than tactics. When the game started to escape us, we broke up completely, which I didn’t like any more. What I didn’t like the most was that we didn’t show toughness even when we no longer had a chance to win.

– There seemed to be toughness in the second half, why couldn’t he move to the other side of the game?
– There was a small stretch in the second half in which we felt something that we could play in attack, but in defense I never felt that we had control and control of the situation. The opponents did everything too easily.

– Is it possible that the students underestimated the opponent?
– I don’t think there could be a reason. We paint the opponent very correctly, very aggressively. The team that defeated Panathinaikos, what more is needed? They can play quality basketball, have good snipers, but as we see, nothing has failed. Ten out of thirteen … Numbers too cruel.

– Which defeat is more painful for you, today or against “Žalgiris”?
– Definitely today. I was not as disappointed after the Žalgiris game as I was today. With Žalgiris, there was also a stage in the third half, when it seemed very difficult. These teams take a heavy load every day, and for us so far, this level of fighting is a first. Stability is needed, 8 or 12 minutes is not enough to shine. You must learn to maintain the level throughout the game.

– Jackson played the full 10 minutes in the second half and scored 10 points in the first 6 minutes, while only 4 points in the rest of the game. Could it be that they overtook him in the square?
– Maybe you are right. We never plan to keep a player on the field for that long, we allow a maximum of 5-6 minutes. But at the time, it seemed necessary that we could solve it that way. It looked good and I wanted to keep the lead, we had a 7 point lead. But 30 minutes is too long even for a basketball player like that.

Chris McCullough’s comment: