Andrea MAZZON
Avtodor head coach:
“We had a really hard trip to Portugal. Four-hour time difference is really a lot. However, this is Europe and we must try to get ready. Unfortunately we have a lot of physical problems because Klimenko will not play and Hummer didn’t practice with us because of his back injury and I don’t actually know in what kind of conditions we will be there as a team. I just hope all the players like Zabelin, Sheleketo and of course Clarke will do extra efforts for this game but it is very difficult to play with a short roster like we have. After all we are going to face Loko already on Sunday. I respect a lot what the guys are doing. We try to recover as much as we can but for sure this is not easy. However, we will do our best and bring Avtodor fighting spirits no matter what and we don’t afraid to play with anybody.

Benfica is a team which shoots a very high amount of three-pointers. They made almost 50% from the arc in the FIBA Europe Cup and also showed approximately the same big numbers of threes in the Portugal league. They are really dangerous and have great scorers in their roster. We will not beat them only with the offense. If we go there with our short roster and think we just need to score more than them to win we are going to face a really big problem. We have to be also focused on defense and make stops.”