Itoudis: Barcelona deserved to win

CSKA Moscow coach Dimitris Itoudis talks after the home loss against Barcelona.

“Congratulations to Barcelona and my friend ‘Saras’. They deserved to win. Until we had strength and we were, if I use the word, fresh, we were dominant and played good basketball. We opened the game very well but the fatigue today was obviously not on our side. It pretty much went this way with the momentum with 4:26 to go, if I am not mistaken, +12, then the run was 4-13 with turnover, turnover, basket and basket, turnover… So we turned over the ball three times consecutively and even though in the first half, you can see the numbers. We didn’t have that many turnovers, and it cost us because each and every turnover, if you count that you don’t have execution, you don’t score and they score, this is a double point. You don’t score, they score, this is minus 4. It happened consecutively three times and we accumulated all turnovers over there and instead of going to the halftime with a normal difference for us, we went in minus 1. We gave a fight, had a better ranking (PIR) than them, less turnovers, more assists and more rebounds but overall, the 4-for-21 shots from the perimeter is not our numbers.”

The Russian team remains in first place in the Euroleague standings with 15 wins in 20 games