BK "Ventspils" will play its second game in Eurocup

Kuban’s basketball players started off the EuroCup with more than a convincing win while away destroying the Polish vice-champions “Stelmet”, and it seems that the meeting with EuroCup 2013 champion won’t be any a nice one for Ventspils team, too. The best scorers on “Loko” team were foreigners – forward Derrick Brown with 23 points, centre Anthony Randolph and forward Krunoslav Simon with 15 points each, while the American point guard Aaron Miles had the biggest playing time who got nine assists in around 29 minutes.

It doesn’t mean that the local players don’t have any say in the game, because, for example, in Poland Nikita Kurbaov played for 24 minutes and scored 12 points, Maxim Grigoryev played for 21 minutes, while Yevgeniy Voronov who is well known to Ventspils players from the last season – 16 minutes. But truth be told if the game between teams is more or less even then the head coach Sergey Bazarevich trusts the locals less and lets the foreigners play even longer minutes. This pattern was observed during the victory in VTB League against CSKA (81:73) and in the loss against “Astana” in Kazakhstan (70:81). By the way, Ventspils players should assess this “Loko”’s loss in Kazakhstan with mixed feelings. On the one hand that “Lokomotiv” is not exactly unbeatable, while on the other hand – the team from Krasnodar should not be underestimated and everyone should be concentrated for the fight during the EuroCup game.

But, of course, Ventspils players don’t think about these kind of things, even though it is clear, that even the potential leader and especially teams with big number of foreigners stuff like this can happen. Ventspils doesn’t hope for this to happen but the game against “Buducnost” proved that Roberts Stelmahers’ team are more than able to find an antidote as for the height advantage, as well as the experience.

Short of World Cup start Lithuanian point guard Mants Kalnietis got an injury but Kuban’s club found a rather good substitute, adding the German basketball champion Malcom Delaney to its roster. Anthony Randolph who played 43 games with Denver “Nuggets” (12,3 minutes, 4,6 points and 2,8 rebounds) does his job under the basket. Derrick Brown and Aaron Miles also have NBA experience, the latter travelled to the team together with the head coach Sergey Bazarevich. The Croatian Krunoslav Simon is still in line, as well as the 203 cm tall Richard Hendrix who won the EuroCup title together with Krasnodar, before that also becoming the Israeli basketball champion.

Ventspils started their 1800 km long journey without the forward Artjoms Butjankovs but all in all the team definitely is in a good mood – the new season began with three victories in the LBL and one success in the EuroCup. Here’s to hoping that after the visit in Russia the mood won’t be ruined.