Thomas Kelati:

– It was a great game, both teams played really hard. Khimki did a great job, staying composed and focused for all the 40 minutes. The match was very close, in the beginning we were staying calm, there were many downs, but at the last minutes we made a comeback. I’m very happy and very proud about the way the team executed tonight.

During first minutes we played soft, we let Lokomotiv do whatever they wanted in offense. This team has good shooters like Rivers, they scored open shots with fantastic percentage. Nevertheless we did a great job defensively in the second half, played more aggressive and changed the course of the meeting.

As for me today I felt that I could do like I performed. Before the game I was focused 100-percent, the game came to me, I took initiative and eventually succeeded. Tonight my teammates gave me the ball so I didn’t have a right to let them down.

The crucial factor was playing five guys at every moment of the game, as well as team defense. We helped each other, were flying around the ball, played great as a unit. Loko has played one-on-one, individually and we stopped them.

The return game in Krasnodar will be very difficult and more different than the very today one cause we’ll play at their home court. They have already beaten us this year in Krasnodar in PBL, we know what to expect. We have to go there not thinking about the points, only to win.