CBA-Euroleague Challenge quotes: Team China 78-75 Benetton Basket Tamoil
Team China head coach Jonas Kazlauskas

I think it was a good and interesting game and I am happy to win against such an important club like Benetton. We have had success because we have had Yao in the last month. When you have a player of his level, every time you can get easy points, and that made a difference at the end of the game. We didn't start the game well. Maybe we were a little afraid of a team from the Euroleague. We made some easy turnovers. We finished the second quarter well, but after we started the third one bad. About our shooting, this is not the only time we've had it tough. There were some games before like this. This is something I talked about from the beginning: we need more games together with Yao, because it's not always easy to play with him. Sometimes the shooting problems are not about the shooters. If you have a player on your team like Yao, the players will always be hesitant to shoot because they are looking for the option to pass to him. That also makes our percentages go down."

Team China center Yao Ming

"CSKA is a very strong team, a recent winner of the European club championships. They have a lot of players I know, like Andersen and Papaloukas, who are among the best players in this world, so tomorrow is going to be a good matchup for sure."

Benetton Basket Tamoil head coach Alessandro Ramagli

"We arrived here after a heavy loss in the Italian Supercoppa, which was our first official game of this season, and a tough loss to come back from. But I thought tonight that our players played a tough game, with spirit and heart, and maybe they deserved something more. This game gave us some good ideas about our team. We have seven new players and I think tonight was a first step in knowing something about our future."

Benetton Basket Tamoil guard Lionel Chalmers

"I think it was very hard-gouth game on both sides. Team China was a very tough team. We attacked them a couple times, especially in the second half, but they stuck with it, and vice-versa, when they attacked us and we stuck with it. I had the feeling while playing it that it would come down to the end. We tried to stretch the lead when we got it, but they didn't let that happen. It's hard to win on the road in games like that, but I hope as we get better that we will be able to win these kinds of games."
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Euroleague.net
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