First chance to get to the semifinals at Khimki Moscow Region’s court

Valencia Basket faces the 7DAYS EuroCup quarterfinals game 2 vs. Khimki Moscow Region (Friday 3, 17: 30h, Basketball Center, TV Mediterráneo / Eurosport2 / Teledeporte web / Euroleague TV web) in what is their first option to get the ticket for EuroCup semifinals. The Taronja team won the game 1 played at Fonteta on Tuesday (88-82) and will qualify for the next round if they are able to win for the first time on a court in which the taronja squad had lost in their four previous visits.

 

Center Slava Kravtsov is out for this game and tomorrow will have surgery on a fracture in the fifth metatarsal of the left foot and will join the french point guard Antoine Diot (traumatic plantar edema, left foot) in the injured list. The young forward Josep Puerto completes the roster for this meeting. The Taronja team defend their best winning streak in EuroCup (13 victories in a row) and their excellent performance as visitors in the European competition, having won their seven away games in the current edition of 7DAYS EuroCup.

 

Khimki Moscow Region needs to win tomorrow to force the third game of this quarterfinals series, that will be played in Valencia on Wednesday, March 8 in Valencia. The Russian squad has never lost vs. Valencia Basket in an official game played outside the Fonteta (has won on the four Taronja visits to Moscow and in the Eurocup 2008-09 Final Four game that was played in Turin). And his good performance at home, where Khimki has a balance of 14 victories and 2 losses in the current season. Shooting guard Alexey Shved leads the EuroCup in points and ranking and made it clear in the Fonteta his good shape with 24 points and 7 assists. French forward Bongou-Colo has missed the last five games of his team and will also be unavailable for tomorrow's match.

 

 

Pedro Martinez and Pierre Oriola quotes

Valencia Basket coach Pedro Martínez pointed out after the end of the game 1 that his team "had achieved on Tuesday a very good win to look forward to. Without Kravtsov, we face the second game of this series with two major casualties, but that is the sport. We will have to see how we can solve it. And go out and do the our best in Moscow with the players we have".  

 

Power forward Pierre Oriola said about tomorrow's game that "we go to Russia with the mentality that we have to add another win to be in the semifinals. We know it's going to be very difficult. Winning away at EuroCup is always hard and more there in Moscow, for sure is going to be a very hard game. But we have the lesson learned from the first game to try to play like Tuesday but minimizing mistakes"

 

Rosters

VALENCIA BASKET

Nº

Name

Born

Position

Height

0

Will Thomas

USA/Georgia

PF

2.03

9

Sam Van Rossom

Belgium

PG

1.88

10

Romain Sato

CAF

SF

1.94

14

Bojan Dubljevic

Montenegro

C

2.05

16

Guillem Vives

Spain

PG

1.92

17

Rafa Martínez

Spain

SG

1.90

18

Pierre Oriola

Spain

PF

2.06

19

Fernando San Emeterio

Spain

SF

1.99

30

Joan Sastre

Spain

SG

2.00

43

Luke Sikma

USA

PF

2.03

53

Josep Puerto

Spain

SF

1.99

 

Injured

 

 

 

8

Antoine Diot

France

PG/SG

1.93

55

Viacheslav Kravtsov

Ukraine

C

2.13

 

Pedro Martínez

 

Coach

 

 

KHIMKI MOSCOW REGION

Nº

Name

Born

Position

Height

0

Jacob Pullen

USA/Georgia

PG

1.85

1

Alexey Shved

Russia

SG

1.95

2

Markel Brown

USA

SG

1.91

6

Robbie Hummel

USA

PF

2.06

7

Ruslan Pateev

Russia

C

2.12

8

Viacheslav Zaitsev

Russia

PG

1.90

9

Egor Vialtsev

Russia

SG

1.93

10

Dmitry Sokolov

Russia

C

2.14

11

Stanislav Ilnitskiy

Russia

SF

2.02

12

Sergey Monia

Russia

PF

2.02

13

Valery Likhodey

Russia

SF

2.04

19

Marko Todorovic

Montenegro

C

2.10

21

Jeremy Evans

USA

C

2.06

22

E.J. Rowland

USA

PG

1.88

 

Injured

 

 

 

16

Nobel Boungou-Colo

France

SF

2.03

 

Dusko Ivanovic

 

Coach

 

 

REFEREES: MOGULKOC (Turkey), HORDOV (Croatia) and MITROVSKI (FYROM)