In the penultimate round of the VTB United League championship, Zenit defeated Lokomotiv-Kuban – 91:86
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In the penultimate round of the VTB United League regular season, Lokomotiv-Kuban hosted Zenit. The guests won – 91:86 – and secured at least third place. The railway workers will remain fourth.
The regular championship of the VTB United League has entered the home stretch, which promises to be very interesting. Exactly how much depended quite heavily on the outcome of the confrontation between Lokomotiv-Kuban and Zenit. Both Krasnodar and St. Petersburg residents still had a chance to move up a notch. The victory in Krasnodar gave Zenit a chance to move from third to second place; the won match left Lokomotiv-Kuban a chance to finish the regular season in third position. And this game was probably closely watched by the coaching staffs of the two leaders of the championship – UNICS and CSKA. On April 13, they will meet in a head-to-head confrontation, and the winner of this match will become the winner of the regular season (Zenit, if the points are equal, will be inferior to the champion in personal meetings). But the loser risked (in the event of Zenit winning in Krasnodar and then in Perm in the last round) falling straight back to third.
So we can say that both Moscow and Kazan were worried about Krasnodar on Tuesday, even though Lokomotiv-Kuban is the best home team in the league – out of 16 games at their stadium, the railway workers lost only two. But there were reasons to worry. Alexander Sekulic’s team spent the second stage of the regular season with varying success – four wins in eight matches. But Zenit coach Javi Pascual, apparently, brought the team into combat mode precisely at the decisive part of the season. As a result, at the second stage, Zenit made one misfire in eight games, losing only to UNICS (in the last round, the St. Petersburgers had already gotten even for that defeat).
However, the Krasnodar team tried from the very first minutes to remove all concerns about their prospects. “Lokomotiv-Kuban” is a young, cheerful, running team, and the hosts laid these trump cards on the table right away. Even Jaylen Burford, who usually remembers that he actually went on the court to hit the hoop only after a long break, as soon as he appeared on the court, began to terrorize the visiting hoop. Plus Okaro White regularly and quite beautifully simply flew through the entire Zenit defense. But Javi Pascual, who, as Vince Hunter says, has more combinations in his notebook than bridges in St. Petersburg, found an antidote to such an onslaught quite quickly. The hosts did not control the perimeter too tightly and eventually began to receive painful shots from a distance from Sergei Karasev and Kyle Kuric. All this led to a 10-point advantage on Zenit’s balance sheet. This, of course, was not a disaster; as the season progressed, the Krasnodar team won back even larger gaps. They are actually league champions in comebacks. But Sekulic needed to intervene in the game. Otherwise, the shooting to which Lokomotiv-Kuban was subjected could have been fatal.
The trainer’s intervention had an effect. Even before the big break, the hosts reduced the gap, getting within two attacks of Zenit. Yes, for this I had to run much more in defense, foul without regard for the consequences, and generally play very tough. But there was probably no other way to break through the extremely dense defense of the guests. Well, step by step, the hosts reduced the gap, and three and a half minutes before the siren, after a powerful pass by Maurice Ndour, they took the lead.
Ndour could have become the hero of the match, but in the end his performance left mixed impressions. Very inopportunely, out of emotion, he began to foul, and earned his fifth foul in the attack, losing the most important possession. And at Zenit Kuric shot again. His long-range hit, plus Zenit’s surprisingly tight defensive play in the last 16 seconds (Lokomotiv were simply not allowed to put the ball into play), essentially brought the guests victory. Although the hosts clung to the match until the last.
Zenit won with a score of 91:86, guaranteed itself third place and will try to climb to second. Lokomotiv-Kuban will remain in fourth position.
VTB United League Championship. Second phase
Lokomotiv-Kuban — Zenit 86:91
Tournament table
I V P % points
Group A
1. UNICS 35 25 10 71
2. CSKA 35 25 10 71
3. Zenit 35 25 10 71
4. Lokomotiv-Kuban 35 23 12 66
5. Parma 34 19 15 56
6. “Yenisei” 34 18 16 53
Group B
1. Uralmash 38 24 14 63
2. “Samara” 38 21 17 55
3. Avtodor 38 18 20 47
4. MBA 38 17 21 45
5. “Rune” 38 15 23 39
6. Nizhny Novgorod 38 13 25 34
7. “Astana” 38 12 26 32
8. “Minsk” 38 1 37 3
Group A is played by the teams that took the first six places at the end of the first stage, in Group B – those that took places from 7th to 14th. The points scored in the first stage are taken into account.
Group A teams guaranteed themselves participation in the playoffs. The four best teams in Group B based on the results of the second stage will play in the play-in stage for the two remaining places in the play-offs. The quarterfinal series will go up to three victories, and the semifinals and finals will go up to four.
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