Ukraine beat the Estonian national team with a difference of one point
Main coach national team of Ukraine basketball Ainars Bagatskis commented on the heavy victory of the blue-yellows over Estonia (74:73) at the championship Europe 2022.
“To be honest, we played terrible basketball at the beginning of the match. Then we realized that we had problems, that we needed to solve something. At times we played very, very high quality basketball. But at times we played without any discipline, gave a lot of opportunities to the opponents, it doesn’t even matter if they used them or not,” said Bagatskis.
“Estonia knows how to play basketball. This is a disciplined team, they know how to use their advantages and the mistakes of their opponents. They did it. We’re lucky the game ended that way. The most important thing is that we have shown that we are a team. We really played as a team. Someone may not have played very well, we made substitutions and the players who came out helped us.”
“But everything I said is really unimportant. We won the match. It’s the most important”.
“Zotov at the start for the match? He knows how to defend well on the court. He came out in the starting lineup and was supposed to attack Criisa. He had to use fouls insanely, smart fouls, not let him actively participate in attacks, and at the same time organize our attack. This is what we planned for the start of the match. I don’t mean to say it didn’t work. Because the way we started is not Zotov’s fault, but the whole team’s.”
The victory over Estonia was the second for Ukraine at EuroBasket 2022. In the first round, the blue-yellows defeated Great Britain (90:61).
Bagatskis’ team will play their next match against Italy on 5 September. The beginning is at 22:00 Kyiv time.
The Blue-Yellows will also face Greece (September 6) and Croatia (September 8) in the group stage. The four best teams from the group will advance to the 1/8 finals.
Source: Sportarena
