St. Petersburg Zenit finished the regular championship of the VTB United League in second place
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The VTB United League regular season ended on Sunday. In the match that closed this part of the championship, Zenit hosted Parma. The St. Petersburg team won with a score of 77:66 and thanks to this they rose to second place in the standings, displacing CSKA, which the day before lost to UNICS in the battle for first place.
The meeting between Zenit and Parma closed the schedule of the regular championship of the VTB United League. It so happened that of the matches scheduled for the last day, she was the only one burdened with tournament intrigue. True, only for Zenit. His victory took him to second place in the final table. Let us remind you that on Saturday UNICS beat CSKA in the battle for first place. So the army team could have remained at least second only if Zenit had lost to the Perm team.
In fact, Parma is the most dangerous opponent for the top clubs in the league this season. Evgeny Pashutin’s team won twice in four meetings against CSKA and Lokomotiv-Kuban. They inflicted three defeats on UNICS. The problem is that for some reason Parma doesn’t succeed in games against Zenit. Although the Permians still had a great chance to beat Javi Pascual’s team. In the match, which took place in early January, the teams needed overtime to sort things out. But it also turned out in favor of Zenit.
Such statistics did not give much reason to believe that Parma, which was also deprived of tournament motivation (the team could no longer move higher or lower than fifth place), would be able to present a surprise at the end of the regular season.
Expectations were not disappointed. Already by the big break, Zenit, in which the team’s newcomers Juven Morgan (14 points per game – the best indicator in the hosts) and Josh Carlton (12 points) took on the role of the main earners, were ahead by a dozen and a half points. Mainly due to long-range hits, which Zenit managed twice as often as their opponents.
And at the beginning of the third quarter, the hosts’ advantage exceeded 20 points. In fact, after that both teams simply finished the match. At least Zenit certainly spent the last minutes in semi-training mode, which explains the fact that the guests were able to reduce the gap to a quite decent one. Zenit won with a score of 77:66. By the way, this was the fifth victory in a row for the St. Petersburg team. And ninth in ten matches of the second stage of the regular season is the best result among all teams in Group A.
Group B still has a couple of unresolved issues. The regular championship ended there too, but now the four strongest teams in Group B must compete for two spots in the play-offs (six more were automatically assigned to the participants in Group A).
Identification of holders of vacant vouchers will take place in play-in mode. The owner of one of them will be determined in the confrontation between the two strongest teams of Group B – Uralmash and Samara. The winner of this game advances to the play-offs, where they will meet Zenit. The loser in the second round will play with the winner of the Avtodor-MBA pair (third and fourth places in Group B). And the team that wins this match will advance to UNICS in the playoffs. Other play-off pairs are as follows: Lokomotiv-Kuban – Parma, CSKA – Yenisei.
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