Watson might still miss Euroleague showdown 0
Travis Watson missed Zalgiris morning practice on Tuesday. The player should join his teammates in the evening training session, but there are increasing doubts whether Watson will be available for coach Ramunas Butautas’ selection in Wednesday’s Euroleague game against CSKA in Kaunas.
The American big man injured his ankle on January 7 in a game versus Cibona Zagreb and hasn’t trained with the team since. However, there are some good news in Zalgiris’ camp – Tadas Klimavicius is already fit to play after falling out of the rotation for the last week with a festering tooth.
Zalgiris will host the visiting CSKA in a Euroleague Top game to mark the third occasion this season when the two bitter rivals meet. Both clubs shared a victory each in the VTB United League. Talking about CSKA, Zalgiris coach Ramunas Butautas marked the strength of one of the elite European clubs.
“It would be hard to search for weaknesses. The team’s individual talent is huge. We can compete with CSKA only with our passion and our team game,” Butautas told on Tuesday. Zalgiris had fallen into a bad stretch of games before Wednesday’s match. After an unsuccessful start of the Top 16 in Gdynia against Asseco Prokom, the Lithuanian club managed to lose in Ventspils against the local side in the Baltic Basketball League.
Butautas hopes that his players will step on the court with the right character and mindset. “I don’t think that these disappointments will break the team down. Hopefully, quite the opposite, it might prove to be in our favor.” “There are a lot of reasons for these things to happen. We’ve played 15 games during the month and it’s hard to concentrate on each and every one of them. We are also traveling a lot, we’re feeling tired. It’s not an excuse. The young players got a lesson, they have to go on the court and prove themselves,” Butautas said.
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