Brad GREENBERG
Avtodor Saratov Head Coach:

«After an exciting win over Barcelona I was concerned about our team heading into the final two games. Would we be hungry to show more improvement or feel a bit satisfied still basking in the positive feelings of the Barcelona game. However, the team responded beautifully and raced off to a very strong start against Joventut. We led 26-10 at the end of the first quarter. Our overall offensive execution in the game was strong. We ran the court pretty well and had solid spacing and timing with our plays. Defensively we contested shots and did a good job with our defensive tactics in the 1st half. But we committed too many fouls in the 2nd quarter which allowed Joventut to shoot a lot of 2nd quarter free throws. We played without Malcolm Armstead who was out with muscle spasms in his back and in the 2nd quarter we lost Denis Lukashov to a hand injury. As a result we played a good portion of the 2nd half with a backcourt tandem of Jeremy Chappell and Evgeny Kolesnikov. Joventut is a strong team and worked their way back into the game and took the lead with 10 seconds to go 86-85. But a nice pass by Jeff Brooks found Alan Makiev under the hoop for the game winning points with 2 seconds on the clock and we denied Joventut a game winning field goal attempt on their last possession.

Our final game against Murcia was an extremely physical contest and we again raised out to a strong first quarter lead 19-11. Our defense in the first 3 quarters was strong holding Murcia to just 33 points and we lead 50-33 going into the 4th quarter. Jeremy Chappell, Jeff Brooks and Denis Lukashov scored in double figures and Artem Zabeline had 8 rebounds in 16 minutes of action. Murcia played a strong 4th quarter to make the final score a bit deceiving. We lead by as 59-43 with a little over 4 minutes to go before Murcia outscored us 15-3 in the last minutes to make the final score Avtodor 62 - Murcia 58.

To finish 4-1 on our pre-season games in Spain against ACB teams proved we are capable of playing solid basketball against competitive teams. But we are by no means a finished product and as we enter the final week of training we have a lot of areas to focus on and improve. We can run the court harder and create more opportunities by beating our opponents down the floor. And we need to work on a number of different defensive tactics to be able to defend some offensive tactics we are sure to face in our first games.

Our 3 centers all contributed in the games in Spain and our forwards - Jeff Brooks and Travis Peterson are smart players who both can pass. It's a luxury in mordern basketball to have forwards that can pass. Our backcourt is still evolving. Illness forced Malcolm Armstead to miss the Zaragoza game and back issues kept him out of both the Joventut and Murcia games. This is an important week for Malcolm to catch up on days he has missed and re-connect on the court with him teammates. The good news is that in Armstead's absence we were able to give Denis Lukashov a lot of minutes and he responded very well. Our wing players Jeremy Chappell and Evgeny Kolesnikov were solid at both ends of the floor and I have confidence in both these players. Ivan Rusetskiy, Alexey Nesterov and Tamirlan Bekkiev also got valuable minutes on the trip.

Our training in Spain was very helpful and we couldn't have been able to do it without the commitment from President Vladimir Rodionov who seriously recognizes the benefits of such an endeavor. We are now back in Saratov and ready to make the most of our last week of training before embarking on the season.»