CSKA was left alone – Newspaper Kommersant No. 209 (7410) dated 11/11/2022
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On Thursday, two leaders of the regular championship of the VTB United League, CSKA and UNICS, met in a face-to-face confrontation. Both Kazan and the army team have not known defeats since the beginning of the championship. Now, only CSKA, which won with a score of 92:79, can boast of a 100% win rate.
CSKA and UNICS on the way to the face-to-face meeting have done a similar way. The teams were given out at the start of the championship series of eight victories. For UNICS, this is the best start in history. But CSKA also had more impressive “debuts” – in the 2018/19 season, the army team won 13 games. Both UNICS and CSKA dealt with almost all opponents very confidently. Plus, both teams passed, and successfully, the test of meetings with the current champion of the VTB United League “Zenith”. So the fans could rightfully count on a real battle. Actually, both UNICS mentor Velimir Perasovich and CSKA head coach Emil Rajkovic described the upcoming match as a battle. Ideally, something similar to the show given by the teams in the second round of last season’s regular season was expected. Then, in addition to regular time, it took three overtimes to determine the winner.
For a long time there was an equal game this time as well. Largely because the guests succeeded in what no one had been able to do since the beginning of the championship – to reduce the effectiveness of Nikola Milutinov to acceptable levels (as subsequent events showed, only for a while, because in the second half of the match Milutinov broke up). After all, CSKA uses castings on the Serbian big one very effectively. In terms of average performance, he is not even in the top 5, but it is the points he scores at the beginning of matches that often set the tone for their further course. At the same time, the Kazan team did well in attack. It cannot be said that one of the UNICS players was dragging the team. Nenad Dimitrievich, Vince Hunter, Louis Labeiry, and Stanislav Ilnitsky joined in at the right moments. However, given the depth of the composition of CSKA, the army team had no problems in order to respond to the blows. Tiny Kasper Weir suddenly began to “disgrace” under someone else’s shield, Dallas Moore confidently beat from a distance, and Alexei Shved conducted the game and also scored a lot.
In general, the effectiveness of the teams at the beginning of the meeting was so high that it seemed that this was an exhibition match, where the main thing was simply to entertain the audience.
The teams went on a big break with the score 42:40 in favor of CSKA, but already a minute and a half after the start of the third quarter, Perasovich was forced to take a timeout. The fact is that CSKA gave a breakthrough 7:0, which certainly had to be stopped. But the coach’s intervention did not help: the army team seemed to turn on a secret accelerator, and four minutes before the end of the quarter, after the throw of Dejan Davidovac, the lead of the hosts had already reached 12 points. The army team is excellent at maintaining such an advantage simply at the expense of the class, which they demonstrated again. All attempts of Kazan to return to the game did not lead to anything. CSKA won with a score of 92:79 and took clear first place.
VTB United League regular season
Enisey-Lokomotiv-Kuban 69:71. CSKA-UNICS 92:79.
Leaderboard
I V P % of wins
1. CSKA 9 9 0 100
2. UNICS 9 8 1 89
3. Zenit 8 6 2 75
4. MBA 8 5 3 63
5. Lokomotiv Kuban 9 5 4 56
6. Samara 8 4 4 50
7. Parma-Pari 8 4 4 50
8. Paris Nizhny Novgorod 8 4 4 50
9. Avtodor 8 2 6 25
10. Enisey 9 2 7 22
11. Astana 8 1 7 13
12. Minsk 8 0 8 0
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