Presidential basketball club «Astana» has begun the home league series of the National League against Kostanay «Tobol» with a landslide victory.
“Tobol” is the last of the rivals in the National League with whom the capital club has not yet held a single game this season, and this was their first game in the season. In addition to Kazakhstani players, Dushan Ristic and Jeremiah Hill were also announced by the coaching staff headed by Emil Rajkovic for this match.
Our team, practically from the start of the match, came forward, but Astana had no clear advantage. “Tobol” stalled a bit in the first minutes of the game, as a result of which they immediately tried on the role of catching up. Kostanay ream did not allow our guys to make any significant breakthrough in the first five minutes, and by the middle of the quarter, they were only one point behind. The rest of the first ten minutes also passed in a bitter struggle, but “Astana” confidently kept a minimum leadership in their hands and was able to increase its lead to 6 points by the end of the quarter. At the beginning of the second quarter, the advantage of the capital team quickly reached a two-digit mark. Nevertheless, the Kostanay team did not give up and tried to return the balance to the game. «Tobol» managed to reduce the gap twice, but the coordinated game of our guys allowed them to go for a long break, having 11 points in the asset with an advantage of 53:42.
The third quarter started a relatively calm pace and with an equal fight, and the gap in score was kept in the region of 10 points. After waiting for the right moment, the wards of Emil Rajkovic made a very powerful leap and discouraged the rivals, in less than three minutes the advantage of our team increased by a decent 13 points. “Tobol” was able to stop the breakthrough of “Astana” by the middle of the third quarter, but the Kostanay team had already lost more than 20 points. Such a comfortable advantage gave confidence to our players, and they steadily continued their game. The gap between the teams until the end of the third quarter did not change much, and after thirty minutes of playing time, it was still 20 odd points. Hardly someone believed that our rivals could somehow influence the outcome of the game. In the last minutes of the match, “Astana” brought their lead up to a maximum of 25 points, to which “Tobol” responded with a final attempt to reduce the gap, but a confident victory remained with the capital team — 98:77 (28:22, 25:20, 31:18,
14:17).“Tobol” was able to support the fight in this game a little more than half of the playing time, and then missed the most powerful spurt of our team and lost all chances to win. “Astana” has been confidently dominating in the National League since the beginning of the season and at the moment there is no fear that any of the rivals will be able to stand against our guys. “Tobol” had remained on the second line, but in case of defeat in tomorrow's match, Kostanay will go down to the third position, having passed “Barsy Atyrau” ahead.
Most productive:
- “Astana” — Dushan Ristic is again the most effective player in the match, with 20 points and 7 rebounds. Jeremiah Hill also has 20 points on his account, as well as 6 rebounds, 6 assists, and 3 steals. Rustam Murzagaliev scored 12 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists today. Robert Pan also has 12 points, plus he had 3 steals and block shots.
- “Tobol” — Anton Ponomarev became the best in the camp of rivals -with 17 points and 6 rebounds, as well as Konstantin Dvirny (15 points).
Next match: tomorrow, on December 10, a second game will be held between «Astana» and «Tobol» as part of the National League series. The match
starts at 19:30 Nur-Sultan time.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, the schedule and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
