In fact, before celebrating the New Year, it is necessary to repay debts. Here the schedule did not help CSKA: to get even for the only defeat in the European arena this season turned out after the holidays. Muscovites played the role of bona fide creditors, returning received in Po "-4" with high interest. It is unlikely that this pleased the French.
Guests from Gascony looked doomed in advance. The CSKA players and fans wanted to see them like that - and Po-Ortez did not deceive expectations. Not because the team lacked the injured Ruper and d'Almeida, not because the wards of Gordon Herbert refused to fight. On the contrary, they sincerely tried and even managed to surprise with very good protection in the first half. But they did not impose anything on the army team, and acting against the best Euroleague club at a second pace would almost certainly mean condemning yourself to death.
Po-Ortez is by no means a European grandeur, and Ettore Messina was not required to set wards of super tasks. According to the trainer, it turned out to be sufficient to follow the maintenance of physical fitness. Classes did not have a New Year pause, because CSKA did not differ from itself as an everyday sample. The same high pace, ball movement and struggle for a rebound, the same diligence of the main team and the expressive reaction of the Italian maximalist mentor, who does not calm down even at "+20". True, with the meeting of the same rivals in France, this was shared only by a couple of quick fouls by Alexei Savrasenko. And that’s all.
The hosts did not look perfect. Calm David Vanterpool, who assumed leadership, after a couple of successful actions could afford a couple of losses in a row (though Messina took advantage of the good mood of the American to give him a little more play). The cunning Theo Papaloukas managed to get under the "pot". And the "Russified" version of the five in the end kept the overconvincing difference solely due to the two "treshki" of captain Zakhar Pashutin.
One would like to say, "by tradition" the young Anton Ponkrashov inherited from Messina. “He plays in a serious team for a man’s salary, and we hope that this will help him become a man,” Ettore once again teased the main hope of Russia. “We stole a life buoy from him, threw him into the sea, and now we hope that Anton will sail out” .
Po Orthosis also teases French hope Jan Mainy, who was drafted by San Antonio last year. After the game, the partners pushed him into the mixed-zone in their underpants, and the lanky dark-skinned guy cuddled at the door, as if afraid of the inexorably approaching Russian winter. It wasn’t cold in Moscow, all the more in the hall of USK CSKA, and the inhabitants of the sports complex did not look like terrible Siberian bears awakened from hibernation. The owners, on the contrary, were well-fed and happy: the New Year was clearly a success.
Nikolai TSYNKEVICH