The stands of the Olympic arena in the Barcelona suburb were filled with greenery gradually - like trees in gardens awaking from winter. The 13-thousand-strong palace did not even meet halfway to meet with the best club in Europe, but worked out for the absentees in full. If it was not possible to take with color, take with sound: chant "¡Penya!" ("green!") was convincing.
The factor of the stands, probably, could crush anyone. But not CSKA. When the fans of “Hoventud”, dissatisfied with almost every whistle of the referees against the home team, burst into a rumble, whistle and blowing pipes, it was hard to hear a neighbor screaming in his ear. And the guys in white uniform - at least henna. It’s hard even to believe that Savrasenko flinched, having missed from under the ring three times in the first minutes, and Smodis, who managed to shoot the bow from the penalty as many times in a row. For both, it was necessary to simply take a breath to regain the confidence of the throw.
Matyazh almost became the top scorer of the match - after the starting failure, he got six times from the game before missing the only time.
The Slovenian sniper’s laurels were “stolen” by the magnificent Holden. While the partners gathered their thoughts, Jay did everything himself, gaining 12 out of 14 guest points at the start! And then, when it became possible to get the rest of the army team, the defender of the Russian team neatly went into the shadows, noting only the most important “three” in the end of the fourth period.
Holden’s performance, by the way, reminded of the heroes of Rudy Fernandez in the Moscow match. Then the Spanish star after a bright start was put out by the defense of CSKA. This time, the wards of Ettore Messina did not postpone the matter, immediately leaving Rudy on a starvation diet. And in the beginning, when there was a tough, on the verge of a foul (“And sometimes beyond,” Messina noted), the struggle for the initiative, Fernandez was remembered only as a three-pointer in the last second of the first quarter. After which he survived a fun and lengthy conversation with Theo Papaloukas, who had a good match, despite his injury. The Greek refused to qualify this conversation as trash talking - "we just discussed the details." But Rudi did not feel any better. The rotation of Papaloukas, Langdon and Ponkrashov, who had mastered the manner of playing an athletic defender, did not leave him room for maneuver. The Hoventud leader scored the most points, but at the cost of 7 misses out of 11 shots and 4 losses.
On the other hand, who got more under the yoke of CSKA? The "British" front line toiled because of a mixed version of the defense of the guests who played the baseline zone (the definition of Messina) - the "zone" on their own front, which did not allow Archibald, Betts and Gains to turn around. Bennett, too, was not remembered for his special achievements. And young Rubio suffered not only because of the tenacious army guardians, but also because of the referees, among whom he had not yet managed to earn authority. The referees did not notice minor violations on the Spanish hope point-blank - let them learn to play contact basketball!
“Hoventud” sought to surprise not only with actions beyond the “border”, but also the ongoing pressure. Useless. The number of losses of the army team increased slightly (it should be noted that out of 16 at least 5 were fouls in the attack), and ingenious ways to break the press (the most fun - with Smodis as a distributor) only forced the hosts to waste their energy. The attack of CSKA was just as ruthless. “It is important that we did not fuss and always tried to bring things to a comfortable throw. In such difficult conditions, this is vital,” said Messina. And so it happened: the Badalonians seemed to be fighting, and the difference stubbornly crawled to "-20", it was reduced to "-8", but suddenly they forgot on the arc of Langdon, Torres or someone else. The guests did not make excessive efforts - the final difference in the tournament sense did not really matter. By the way, the parallel victory of the “Taugres” over the “Maccabi” left only a theoretical possibility of the Muscovites returning to Spain for the quarter finals.
But Smodish still flew to Moscow. At the airport, he was personally escorted by some high-ranking Spanish official who easily convinced border guards of the special status of the Slovenian ...
Nikolai TSYNKEVICH, Badalona