Kazan UNICS beat CSKA in the VTB United League championship match

On the last day of the first stage of the VTB United League regular championship, the tournament leaders CSKA and UNICS met in Moscow. The confrontation between the ten-time champion and the current champion fully justified its status. The audience saw a high-quality show in which Dmitry Kulagin performed as a soloist. The Kazan defender played the best match of his career, hit six shots from distance, that is, the same number as all CSKA players combined, and provided his team with victory – 83:73.

Both CSKA and UNICS, regardless of the result of their head-to-head meeting, could no longer move anywhere in the standings. CSKA remained first, UNICS – second. But we are talking here specifically about the confrontation within the first stage of the regular season. And ahead of the second, in which the teams that are in the top 6 (they automatically received tickets to the play-offs) will hold a two-round tournament, where they will play for the advantage of their home court at the decisive stage of the championship. The remaining eight teams, let us remind you, will compete for two more places in the playoffs in their tournament. At the same time, at the second stage of the regular season, the points obtained at the first are taken into account. So in reality, the Moscow-Kazan confrontation had a solid tournament background. It was especially important for UNICS, since Velimir Perasovic’s team lost the first round match at home to the army team. And in general, meetings of such fundamental rivals as CSKA and UNICS, even if held within the framework of the notorious water pumping championship, are doomed to be very tense.

And so it happened. Moreover, the tough confrontation on the floor began without any buildup, from the first minutes. CSKA obviously tried to use the factor of its site, especially since the match could boast of significant spectator interest, gathering more than 7 thousand fans in the stands.

Be that as it may, due to extremely fast and some very prickly defense, the army team led the game.

This was not immediately reflected in the bill. During the opening quarter, the scoreboard showed equality four times, and formally things were going well for UNICS. The problem was that two-thirds of the Kazan team’s scoring was done by one player – Nenad Dimitrievich. With all due respect to the MVP of the play-offs of last season, it was naive to count on the Macedonian to beat CSKA alone. In addition, the army team really found its game with Casper Ware, Melo Trimble exploded very successfully, plus the army bigs Livio Jean-Charles and Amat Mbaye still looked more effective than the Kazan towers Louis Laberie, Ismael Bako and Jalen Reynolds (although the latter’s powerful dunk , probably can be considered the most spectacular moment of the match).

CSKA went into the big break with a surplus of eight points plus, perhaps even more important, a strategic initiative (then army coach Emil Raikovich admitted that his team might have thought “that victory was already in their pocket”). After all, it seemed that it was the army team that led the game, that it was they who determined where and when the blow would be struck.

But after a long break, something happened that was reminiscent of a bearded joke about how our people fought with the Germans for a week for the forester’s hut, until the forester himself came and drove everyone out of the forest. This time the forester’s name was Dmitry Kulagin.

The Kazan defender is a player who is undoubtedly not devoid of talent, but is often very dependent on his mood. Let’s say this season he had a dozen matches when he scored more than 10 points (a couple of times even 17 points), but more often Kulagin was limited to more modest indicators. But on Sunday he suddenly began to succeed in almost everything. In the third quarter, he made five three-pointers in a row! In total, he made eight long-range attempts during the match, six of which reached the target.

CSKA was clearly not ready for such a miracle weapon to appear in its opponent’s hands. The army team, by inertia, continued to do what they were good at – loading balls into the paint with their big ones. But it no longer had the same effect. There was, however, a moment when it seemed that CSKA had something to answer – Trimble briefly brought the hosts ahead again. But then Kulagin turned on again, and he hit not only three-point shots, but also two-point shots (he finished the match with 27 points, which is the best figure in his career), and the rest was completed by the Kazan defense, which by the end of the match had scored some reinforced concrete strength.

The result was a well-deserved victory for UNICS with a score of 83:73, which gave the Kazan team the opportunity to get closer to CSKA.

The army team is still two wins ahead of the current champion, but this is not much when there are still a dozen matches ahead, among which there will be no easy ones. A clear confirmation of this is the meeting between Yenisey and Zenit that took place on Sunday. The Krasnoyarsk team has already made a statement by getting into the top 6 following the results of the first part of the regular season, but it seems they do not intend to stop there. They beat a much more solidly equipped Zenit – 91:83. By the way, this was the first victory in history for Yenisei over Zenit.

Let us add that the matches of the second stage of the regular season will start on February 9. The regular season will end on April 14.

Alexander Petrov