Runa beat UNICS away
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In one of the central matches of the week of the regular championship of the VTB United League, the current champion UNICS hosted his debutant “Runa”. Despite the fact that the teams seem to belong to different weight categories, before the head-to-head meeting, the first in history, they were adjacent in the standings. The Kazan team came second, the Muscovites came third, and only one victory separated them. For Runa, this was the first real test of its potential. The team passed it brilliantly, winning with a score of 86:83
Moscow “Runa”, admitted to the VTB United League at the end of last season, is a young team. Not in terms of the roster assembled by its management (by the way, Runa’s general director Sergei Yukhnevich is 25 years old), which can be called something of a fusion of experience and youth, but in terms of what relates to the history of the club. “Runa” received professional status only in 2017 and in just five years made its way from the Super League to the strongest league in Russian basketball. Runa, along with another Super League club, Uralmash, received an invitation to join the VTB United League last spring, at the end of the 2022/23 season. And now, almost a month and a half after the start of the new season, no one will say that the league management made a mistake with the newcomers. The same “Uralmash” has already twice scored victories over top clubs – “Zenit” and “Lokomotiv-Kuban”, and “Runa” even climbed into the top 3, having suffered only two defeats in seven matches.
However, one should still treat such agility of the Moscow team with caution. Unlike Uralmash, Runa had not crossed paths with the strongest teams in the league until Thursday. And, in fact, the match against UNICS should have at least partially clarified how justified the Vikings’ claims to a place in the playoffs are. By the way, “Rune” will have several more such conventional moments of truth in the near future. The team has entered a period during which in just over two weeks it will also have to play against CSKA, Lokomotiv-Kuban and Zenit.
And I must say that the coaches of these teams have something to think about before the meeting with Runa, which showed very high-quality basketball in the confrontation with UNICS. What pleased Ertugrul Erdogan’s team in the game (the Turkish specialist, who has worked in several Turkish clubs, including Galatasaray, took charge of Runa last summer) was their absolute immunity to pressure from the stands. The Kazan “Basket Hall” was very noisy, but neither Jeremiah Hill, nor Ilya Popov, nor Kirill Savin, nor Alex Tyus (an American big man who played for a dozen European clubs during his career, including Real Madrid, Maccabi and the same UNICS is, perhaps, Runa’s key acquisition) this did not stop them from gaining points. And it turned out to be somehow easy for the guests. It’s as if the UNICS players couldn’t even imagine that they could face such pressure. As a result, with the score 19:9 in favor of the guests (and this was just five minutes after the start of the match), Kazan coach Velimir Perasovich had to take a time out to stop the team’s collapse. Well, throw your trump cards into battle ahead of time – Jalen Reynolds and Nenad Dimitrievich.
But even UNICS switching to full combat mode did not bother the opponent. Still, “Runa” acted very tenaciously in defense and very brazenly under someone else’s shield. The teams went into the long break with the score 40:35 in favor of Runa. It didn’t take long after the game resumed, and the guests’ lead doubled. This happened after another pass by Juven Morgan. Perasovich never fully managed to resolve the issue with the opponent’s rapid runs under his team’s hoop. And the Kazan coach could also complain that Louis Laberie got addicted to fouls too early (in the end he was forced to leave the court altogether due to too many violations). Or the fact that Marcos Knight didn’t hit from range. Or the fact that although Dimitrievich scored (with 23 points he became the most productive player of the meeting), he missed many chances, and did not lead the team’s game as effectively as usual.
All this, however, does not in any way detract from the achievement of “Rune,” which was both more effective and more patient. Even in the end, when UNICS, which had already switched to afterburner mode, turned the depressing “minus 10” into a hopeful “minus 5”, and then into an almost meaningless “minus 2”, on the opponent’s mistakes in just half a minute, the guests survived and brought the match to victory with a score of 86:83 – so far the most notable in the short history of the team. “Runa” is equal in the number of victories and defeats with UNICS, but the Kazan team still remains second due to additional indicators.
VTB United League Championship
“Nizhny Novgorod” — “Avtodor” 65:75. “Zenit” — “Parma” 78:54. CSKA—Samara 94:76. “Astana” — “Lokomotiv-Kuban” 78:68. UNICS—Runa 83:86. MBA—Yenisei 80:85.
Tournament table
I V P % points
1. CSKA 9 9 0 100
2. UNICS 8 6 2 75
3. “Rune” 8 6 2 75
4. “Yenisei” 9 6 3 67
5. Zenit 9 5 4 56
6. Uralmash 9 5 4 56
7. Lokomotiv-Kuban 9 4 5 44
8. “Samara” 9 4 5 44
9. “Astana” 7 3 4 43
10. “Nizhny Novgorod” 8 3 5 38
11. Parma 9 3 6 33
12. MBA 9 3 6 33
13. Avtodor 9 3 6 33
14. “Minsk” 8 0 8 0
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