ZABIRCHENKO: “It is always prestigious and enjoyable to beat the championship leader”

Head coach of Kyiv-Basket Dmitry Zabirchenko He evaluated the victory against Dnepr in the Super League regular season match (75:69).

“Positive impressions. Of course, this is the regular season, but after the defeat against the Kharkov Falcons, I still wanted to recover in front of our fans. I don’t think we deserved such a big defeat in Dnipro when we played with the Falcons. I still wanted the players to feel responsible for the game they played and apologize to the fans for the defeat they lost to the Falcons. They really did their best today. They responded to the situation we had. As a coach, this made me very happy, because after a defeat they can focus on winning as much as possible and for the sake of victory They can do anything. Young players are of course unstable and as you can see we can lose against Kharkiv Falcons in the quarter -21 and win against Dnepr.

Everyone understands that Dnepr is the leader of the championship. Winning against the championship leader is always prestigious and enjoyable. We are really happy today in terms of basketball. We didn’t play much without Karpyuk. Maxim Sandul was almost alone at number five. Yaroslav has been going to the 3×3 national team for two years; Artem Smitiukh plays in the fifth row in all training sessions. His great player skills really helped us a lot today. I respect him very much, thank you for the game. He really struggled against Zagreb, but he did not lose the fight. Yes, there were fouls and stuff, but he did not lose the fight. This is the most important thing. He has a bright head. He understands his advantages when he plays at number five, and that’s the most important thing.

It’s always harder to prepare for the second match. You play by your own rules from scratch. It will be difficult for us against Zaporozhye, because today there is a victory over the Dnieper. You may not be able to recover emotionally because of your game against Zaporozhye. I would like to thank our audience and people who came to support us today in such cold weather and gave crazy support, thanks to which we broke Dnepr somewhere in the fourth quarter. We are athletes and we all want to win, we must be passionate. “I really want the players to experience the same excitement tomorrow as they do today.”