VTB United League newcomers became the discovery of the month

On Sunday, the matches “Nizhny Novgorod” – “Uralmash” and “Avtodor” – UNICS ended the first month of the regular championship of the VTB United League. And it should be noted that it brought quite unexpected results. After all, both newcomers to the league – Runa and Uralmash – are in the top four of the championship, ahead of the champion of the season before last, Zenit, and the vice-champion of the last season, Lokomotiv-Kuban. If things continue like this, the fight for places in the top 6, which give automatic tickets to the playoffs, promises to be very intriguing.

A month has passed since the start of the regular VTB United League championship (the first match of the new season was played on September 30). On the one hand, this is quite a bit. On the other hand, more than a quarter of the first stage of the tournament, which will end in early February, is already behind us. So some conclusions can still be drawn. The most notable of them is that the management of the VTB United League clearly got it right when they invited the Moscow Runa and Uralmash to join the tournament. A month ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that newcomers – and usually in the debut season they concentrate on simply getting used to the new environment – would demonstrate such agility. For example, Uralmash, which on Sunday chalked up a victory over Nizhny Novgorod with a score of 91:77 (for the Ural team it became the fourth in seven matches), came into the spotlight twice in a month, becoming the author of unexpected results. In their first game of the season, the Ekaterinburg team beat the champion of the season before last, Zenit, and on their court. A week later, already at home, last season’s vice-champion Lokomotiv-Kuban was defeated. As a result, Uralmash is in fourth place in the standings.

The team could have climbed even higher if it had not encountered an inexplicable epidemic of missed three-point shots.

Uralmash’s sniper hit percentage is the worst in the league – 27.6. At the same time, the Urals team has enough snipers, and judging by the game against Nizhny Novgorod, their aim is improving. In Sunday’s match, Uralmash shot from distance with an accuracy percentage of 36.4 (10 hits out of 24 attempts), which obviously deprived the Nizhny Novgorod team of an advantage in an important component of the game. And here Uralmash also has Elius Octavius, as they say, gone crazy. The American hardly missed a beat and finished the match with 22 points (the best score of the match).

As for Runa, it is in third place, behind only CSKA, which remains the only participant in the tournament that has not yet suffered a single defeat (the army team has seven victories in a row), and the current league champion UNICS. On Sunday, Kazan, who stumbled in the previous match against Samara, beat Avtodor with a score of 82:72, which did not figure out what to do with the visiting leader Jalen Reynolds (finished the match with 27 points). Yes, it should be noted that Runa has never met with the league’s top clubs (the first such meeting will take place on November 9, when Runa goes to Kazan to visit UNICS). In a good way, it is in such meetings that the real potential of the team is tested. But what the Moscow club has already shown, winning four out of six matches and becoming the best in the league in making two-point shots (61.4% of the team’s two-point attempts reach the target), is impressive.

In general, if the first stage of the regular season suddenly ended right now, a funny situation would arise. Places in Group A at the second stage (six teams included in it automatically qualify for the play-offs) would be given to CSKA, UNICS, Runa, Uralmash, Zenit and Samara.

That is, three giants, two debutants and one more team spending only their second season in the league. A clear indication that the big clubs will at least have to worry about their place in the hierarchy. For now, Lokomotiv-Kuban has more reasons for concern. Krasnodar are only in tenth place with three wins in seven matches.

Arnold Kabanov