In a thrilling game with a huge European powerhouse FC Barcelona Regal BC Khimki managed to give great fight to the home team but lost in the very ending with the minimal score — 69-71 (16-21, 18-23, 14-16, 21-11). Now on Monday, March 4, 2013 BC Khimki on the road will meet with Lietuvos Rytas Lithuania.
Best scorers: Davis (18 + 9 rebounds), Planinic (12 + 5 rebounds), Fridzon (12)
Rimas Kurtinaitis:
— I think that both teams played really well tonight. I would like to congratulate Barcelona and its coach. They were a little bit better than us tonight. I am happy with the way we fought, but everybody knows that Barcelona is really strong. Two of my players, Zoran Planinic and Matt Nielsen, had physical problems before the game. We needed to do a little bit better to win the game. We missed too many three-point shots and that killed us. I don't think we have options to be first in this group, but maybe we can be second or third. Our goal is to make it to the playoffs, this would be good. We got the tie-break advantage against Barcelona, but that's not important under the current situation. In the last two years, my team has showed a lot of character. We always fight until the end, no matter if we are up by 10 or down by 20. We fight all 40 minutes, as we did today. We try to do our job, but even though we did well on defense, we need a better three-point shooting percentage to get this win.