CSKA leads the VTB United League championship
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In the central match of the week of the VTB United League regular championship, Zenit hosted UNICS. In the three previous meetings between the teams, victory invariably went to Kazan. But this time Javi Pascual’s team played a very even match, won with a score of 91:87 and deprived UNICS of first place in the standings. It is now occupied by CSKA.
The St. Petersburg team approached the last meeting in the current regular championship with UNICS (Zenit lost the previous three), already knowing for sure that it would not be able to rise to first place in the regular season. But the chance that she would lose her third position was quite real: Lokomotiv-Kuban was closing in on Zenit’s heels. As for UNICS, what was at stake for him was precisely the preservation of first place, which the Kazan team occupied only due to the fact that they were ahead of CSKA in terms of additional indicators.
The debut of the match was a little better for Zenit. The hosts had the Thomas Ertel-Vince Hunter combination working from the very beginning, plus Ertel himself also attacked quite successfully. Well, Zenit’s signature tight defense produced results. The hosts didn’t seem to do anything grandiose, and besides, UNICS’s trump cards worked quite well. For example, Zenit did not completely solve the problem of Nenad Dimitrievich, who eventually became the most productive player of the meeting with 24 points. Just as he failed to sufficiently neutralize Jalen Reynolds. However, already in the second quarter, after a couple of hits by Ertel, Zenit formed an eight-point surplus, forcing the visiting coach Velimir Perasovic to urgently take a time-out. The Kazan coach, we note, generally played a very emotional match, constantly reprimanding something to his players. Even Dimitrievich got it, despite his performance.
Perasovich’s intervention helped UNICS stabilize the situation, and after a long break, the Kazan team themselves tried to seize the initiative. Not without success. And Pascual already had to make a suggestion to his players. It is noteworthy that Mikhail Belenitsky, who was on loan from Nizhny Novgorod until the end of the season, actively participated in the breakthrough of the Kazan team (Andrei Vorontsevich also returned to UNICS with him).
It seemed that neither team would be able to gain a decisive advantage, unless one of them suddenly stopped playing. So the spectators, who filled the stands of the KSK Arena to capacity, could, as it were, prepare in advance for a difficult ending. But by and large it never happened. At Zenit, Kyle Kuric shot at the right time and scored a three-pointer with a foul. Then Ertel turned on again, and Zenit’s lead crawled to the ten-point mark. At the same time, there were only a couple of minutes left before the siren. This is not so little, but the most that UNICS was enough to do was to get within four points – Zenit won with a score of 91:87.
This victory allowed the St. Petersburg team to gain a foothold in third place, one victory ahead of Lokomotiv-Kuban. As for UNICS, for which, by the way, this was already the third lost match in a row, it moved from first line in the standings to second, behind CSKA (the army team also had 25 victories, but at the same time they played one match less). However, the end to the fight for first place in the regular season will probably be reached in the last round – in the head-to-head confrontation between UNICS and CSKA.
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