Alexey Shved buried a pull-up jumper with 1.1 seconds remaining to give Khimki a 91-89 win in the Moscow derby against CSKA in the first round of Euroleague Top 16 clashes.
Milos Teodosic had a chance to snatch the win for CSKA but his off-balance effort from the corner was way short.
“As a team we play better and better from game to game and today we have shown it, Shved, who led all scorers with 28 points said.
“In the second half we played much better in defence and offence. The guys helped each other and fought as we scored this win in the end. We are happy about it.”
It gives Khimki a winning start to Group F with Olympiacos joining win in the column as they downed Barcelona 74-62 in Piraeus.
Vassilis Spanoulis top scored with 11 points in a well balanced scoring effort by the Greek side as they raced clear in the second quarter, turning a tied game at 14-14 after the first period and making it a 39-26 game at the half.
And from there, Olympiacos never looked back.
“It is a very important win and a good start in the Top 16,” Olympiacos coach Giannis Sfairopoulos said.
“I think that we played better than Barcelona and deserved to beat them, since we put our tempo through the defence and forced them to score only 62 points, instead of their average of 82.2 per game.”
Ante Tomic led Barcelona with 16 points.
In Group E and Unicaja Malaga began their Top 16 campaign with a win as they beat Darussafaka Dogus Istanbul 70-62.
A close game for the first three quarters was then blown open as Unicaja held their Turkish counterparts to just nine points in the final period, allowing them to take the win.
Edwin Jackson paced Malaga with 20 points.
