Kazan arrived as St. Petersburg – Newspaper Kommersant No. 29 (7474) dated 02/16/2023
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On Wednesday, the two best teams of the current season of the VTB United League – CSKA and UNICS – met in another face-to-face confrontation. In the battle between the Moscow and Kazan giants Kazan won: UNICS won with a score of 112:104. For CSKA this is only the second defeat of the season. And UNICS got a chance to challenge the championship in the regular season.
The confrontation between the Moscow and Kazan giants has long become a kind of classic of Russian basketball. Yes, you can remember that UNICS almost always loses to the army team (the balance of meetings within the VTB League is 24:7 in favor of CSKA) and that Kazan also lost the first two regular season matches of the current season. But you can also remember that it is the matches against CSKA UNICS in recent years that have been the hardest. One of them will remain in the memory of the fans for a long time: in February 2022, the army team and Kazan gave a show with three overtimes. The hero of that match was Mario Hezonya, who brought victory to Kazan.
In the new season, CSKA responded with two victories. However, the last of them (UNICS lost in it with a difference of only two points) was achieved so hard that there was every reason to believe that its outcome did not give a final answer to the question of who is stronger.
The two mentioned defeats of UNICS against CSKA during the regular season could not help but affect the mood of the Kazan team before the match with the army team. Obviously, UNICS mentor Velimir Perasovich wanted revenge for past failures. Moreover, CSKA still turned out to be not so invulnerable as it seemed during the entire championship – in early February, the record winning streak of the army team (it amounted to 24 matches) was interrupted in the game against Zenit.
The army team, however, did not even think of playing giveaway with UNICS and from the first minutes loaded the opponent with their strongest trump cards. One of them is a game of “paint” on Nikola Milutinov. As a rule, this move of the army team does not beat their opponents. But Wednesday was a different story. Playing on Milutinov, his actions did not give the desired effect. After all, the “big” UNICS quite effectively coped with Milutinov. And the leader and joker of CSKA – Alexei Shved and Kasper Ware, respectively – also did not please with outstanding performance.
However, CSKA’s ten-minute period was enough for the first, absolutely equal in terms of the quality of performance by the teams. But the next CSKA lost with a score of 18:34. Guests simply could not cope with the effectiveness of Kazan. And they were all effective – almost any of the UNICS players who entered the floor scored points. Nenad Dimitrievich and Daryl Macon were especially good at it. As a result, UNICS had a surplus of 17 points for a big break.
A solid reserve, to be sure, but in the confrontation with CSKA, even he does not give any guarantees. And the army team slowly, step by step, began to bite off this deficit. CSKA managed to fully include Milutinov in the game, the Swede began to score points (mostly on fouls), and Ware adjusted the sight.
Five minutes before the siren, only five points remained from the advantage of UNICS. And a minute before the end of regular time, after the throw of Dejan Davidovac, and one thing at all. In the end, it all came down to a nervous ending, resulting in overtime. Louis Labery became his hero. Throughout almost the entire match, the Frenchman was hardly noticeable. But it was precisely the most important seconds that he played superbly, providing his team with an advantage that allowed UNICS to beat CSKA for the first time this season. Kazan won with a score of 112:104 and retained a real chance of becoming the first in the regular season.
VTB United League Championship. Second phase
Group A MBA – Lokomotiv Kuban 60:89. UNICS-CSKA 112:104 (overtime). Group B “Samara” – “Astana” 89:75.
Leaderboard
Group A
I V P % of wins
1. CSKA 27 25 2 93
2. UNICS 26 23 3 88
3. Zenit 26 18 8 69
4. Paris Nizhny Novgorod 26 15 11 58
5. Lokomotiv Kuban 27 15 12 56
6. MBA 26 13 13 50
Group B
1. Parma-Pari 25 11 14 44
2. Samara 26 11 15 42
3. Avtodor 25 10 15 40
4. Enisey 26 9 17 35
5. Astana 25 5 20 20
6. Minsk 27 1 26 4
Points scored by teams in the first stage are taken into account. According to the results of the second stage, all six teams of group A and the two best teams of group B advance to the 1/4 finals.
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