Astana played a home match in the VTB United League for the first time since the beginning of February.
PARMA-PARI from Perm visited Oleg Kiselev's team, a club over which Astana has already won a home victory this season.
Although anything could have happened in the end, the final score favored PARMA-PARI — 73-74.
It is worth noting that Astana won the first half, which ended with a buzzer-beater performed by Kwame Vaughn. At the same time, in the third quarter, the guests scored enough points to keep the victory in the match, even though Astana led the final ten-minute period.
«I want to congratulate the team. The guys showed character and played defense much better than in previous matches. Today there was good communication, and we used different combinations of players. All the guys gave their best: they took 40 rebounds today, controlled the game, and sometimes led by 10 points. Then they made unforced errors and thus allowed Astana to return to the game. I am glad we won and took another step towards our goal — reaching the playoffs. We see that the struggle has heated up. Everyone has equal chances, and, in fact, the playoffs have already begun for us. We have to win every game,» — the opponent's coach Evgeny Pashutin said after the game.
The heroes of the meeting in Astana were Kwame Vaughn (17 points, 7 assists), Rustam Murzagaliev (17 points, 4 assists), Valery Likhodei (15 points, 5 rebounds), Markell Johnson (9 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists). Having scored 17 points, Rustam Murzagaliev repeated his historical record — earlier, the captain of the capital's team scored the same number in the match against Minsk last year.
Astana will play the next home match on March 9 against Avtodor. Tickets will be on sale soon.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, schedule, and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
