Astana — CSKA, 23 September 2020

Starting from afar

Our team went to Nur-Sultan to start the season.

Pre-game breakdown

Kazakhstan borders were closed for a very long time, so the Army Men prepared to take the charter flight long ago.

All players with exception of Johannes Voigtmann (rest) went to Kazakhstan capitol. The coaches will decide on the roster tomorrow before the game.

Astana started its preparations pretty late because of COVID-19 restrictions. They played just one friendly game routing Tobol Kostanay (107-45).

Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:

We are very excited. We missed the action and now we start our official games. Let’s hope and pray that everything will go smoothly regarding the spread of the virus, I wish the players and staff of all teams, and obviously fans to stay healthy. We are pretty much in a good path in means of preparations, we have new additions but their adjustment is good. We always respect our opponents. Astana is a new team, they have new foreigners and players from Kazakhstan, it is not going to be easy, we will play serious over there. So we are thrilled and motivated to start the league.

“Relativity” connections

Valery Tikhonenko, Astana General Manager, is a legend of CSKA. He played for the Army Men for 5 seasons (1985-87, 1997-2000) and coached the team for 2 years (2000-02).

Martins Meiers played together with Janis Strelnieks at Ventspils during 2009-10 season.

Past matchups

Win-loss record: 20-0
Games of 2019-20 season:
15-Dec-2019. CSKA – Astana: 104-91 (+13)
10-Feb-2020. Astana – CSKA: 72-95 (+23)

Short dossier

BC Astana (Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan)
Founded: 2000
Colors: yellow, blue
Home court: SC Velotrack/Saryarka (9,270).
President: Valery Tikhonenko
Head coach: Emil Rajkovic
Website: pbcastana.kz
Trophy case: 7-time Kazakhstan champion (2012-15, 17-19), 7-time Kazakhstan Cup winner (2011-14,17-19), FIBA Asian Champions Cup bronze winner (2017).