UNICS stripped champion league – Kommersant
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UNICS became the second play-off finalist of the VTB United League. Kazan in a tense confrontation, literally at the last second beat Zenit in the seventh match of the semi-final series with a score of 80:79. UNICS will compete with Lokomotiv-Kuban for the title.
The semi-finals of this season are developing in such a way that neither the basketball players nor the fans have a single chance to somehow take a breath. Only on Monday, an end was put to the insane series of CSKA-Lokomotiv-Kuban, which recorded a historic result, namely, that the army team for the first time in the history of the league would not play in the final, and on Tuesday, on the parquet of the Kazan Basket Hall on their the seventh, which means the decisive match came UNICS and Zenit.
In this pair, in contrast to the Moscow-Krasnodar, in which, as it turned out recklessly, they predicted a quick denouement, the ripening of the series until the seventh repetition cannot be called a surprise. Already very close now rivals in terms of level. This season, the teams have already crossed paths ten times and have not found out who is still stronger. Actually, in the entire history of the confrontation, one might say, they never found out – the score of personal meetings on Tuesday evening was 18:18.
But still, the Zenit fans had one trump card, which blocked all the figures indicating equality. Petersburg won the championship (last season). UNICS never. Kazan reached the final four times and each time they stumbled there, getting into CSKA. Considering, however, that the army team has already retired from the champion race, and Lokomotiv-Kuban, with all due respect to the surprisingly militant and nice team created by Alexander Sekulich, is still inferior to both UNICS and Zenit in terms of selection of players, it turned out that Tuesday’s Kazan meeting acquired some signs of an early final.
By definition, this match could not be easy for any of the teams. They got to know each other too well. So much so that not some tactical schemes, but a banal readiness and ability to give out the maximum possible came to the fore. “Zenith” did not change itself and from the first minutes made a bet on long-range shots. The very ones that brought him success in the fourth match of the series, in which Javi Pascual’s wards managed to hit 19 times from a distance. In less than a quarter and a half, the guests fired three-pointers 11 times, but, fortunately for the hosts, hit only three times. UNICS itself again relied on a tough game under the shields, where Jalen Reynolds, Louis Labeyri, and Vince Hunter tried to choke the opponent. Not without success, given that the most dangerous Thomas Ertel Kazan quite successfully (as it turned out later, only temporarily) blocked. Zenit, in turn, for the most part managed to keep Nenad Dimitrievich under control. What happens when they let him out of control, he showed in the fifth match of the series, when he scored 32 points for Zenit!
The teams went to the long break with the score 36:31 in favor of the hosts, thus preserving all the existing intrigues. But even after the resumption of the game, none of the teams could achieve any significant advantage. And then the same Ertel and Dimitrievich took over the game. The Frenchman nevertheless adapted to the pressure to which his opponents subjected him, and, like a ninja, managed to seep to the ring over and over again. By and large, the whole game of Zenit, especially in the final ten minutes, came down to the formula “give the ball to Ertel”. And such a simple tactic could give a great result. But UNICS had Dimitrievich. He kept the team afloat, he responded to Ertel’s blows with his own and five seconds before the siren made the score a draw. Zenit had time to attack, but instead of it, Andrei Zubkov’s unnecessary spade happened, and with it the change of the attacking team. And it was an attack for a million – a second before the time expired, Vince Hunter was entitled to two free throws. He implemented one. And this was enough for the team of Velimir Perasovich. UNICS won with a score of 80:79. By the way, in the confrontation between the two main persons of this game – Dimitrievich and Ertel – the difference in the score is also minimal – 24:23. But, despite the meagerness, it is huge. She sent the first to the final, the second to the consolation match for third place.
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