By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
The coach reached his 500th game with Real Madrid, yet he doesn’t care about the number, but about the loss. Of course, he added that he’s happy to be part of the team for this long: “Somehow you have to be happy with such a number in a team like Real Madrid because it means you’re doing something right.”
When asked about Real’s shut-down in the first quarter, he mentioned: “Difficult to explain, I understand the reason for this question. We made so many bad plays in the first quarter that’s difficult to explain. The game is finished and I do hope that this will be a lesson for us in the future”.
Laso also discussed Llull’s situation and progress: “I expect Sergio Llull to come back this season. He’s making progress. If it was up to him, he would play 100% today. He came to me back in December when we were practicing for an ACB game and he said: “Pablo, I can play”. He has that kind of heart. I’m not a doctor, I cannot say when he will come back, but we’re expecting it to be this season”.
CSKA Moscow‘s coach Dimitris Itoudis gave credit to his players and also to Madrid: “Obviously, that was not a walk in the park. It will never be a walk in the park in the EuroLeague. Of course, we had a great start, and this is what we were working on all week. We wanted to play at a high tempo. Right now we are not ready to play at a high tempo for 40 minutes. We also had a great opponent in front of us. They slowed us down, they hit some big shots that we didn’t hit in the second half with the same frequency we had in the first and second quarters. They slowed us down not in the open court but in the half court. But overall I have to say congratulations to my team. It’s another good streak. We defended our home, we won another game in the EuroLeague, and that’s important. Congratulations to them and to these 13,000 fans. It’s great to have such an atmosphere here, so we thank them very much”.