“Zenith” finished well – Newspaper Kommersant No. 3 (7448) of 01/11/2023
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In the central match of the week of the VTB United League championship, Zenit hosted Lokomotiv-Kuban. The meeting of the St. Petersburg and Krasnodar teams in the first round was perhaps the craziest in the current championship. But the repetition of madness did not happen, although the outcome of the confrontation was still decided in the last seconds. Luckier was Zenit, which was in the lead throughout the match and won with a score of 73:71.
The first stage of the VTB United League regular season is coming to an end. The last round will take place on January 20. According to the regulations, according to the results of the first stage, 12 league teams are divided into two sixes. The top six clubs automatically advance to the playoffs. Six others are fighting for the remaining two tickets to the 1/8 finals. And it so happened that the composition of these sixes was already determined last Sunday. Group A included CSKA, UNICS, Zenit, MBA, Nizhny Novgorod, Lokomotiv-Kuban. Group B: Parma, Samara, Avtodor, Yenisei, Astana, Minsk. All this, however, does not mean that the remaining matches for the teams that have already secured places in the playoffs have lost their meaning. The fact is that at the second stage of the regular season, where the participants will hold two-round tournaments within sixes, the points obtained at the first stage will also be taken into account. But it will depend on the final arrangement at the end of the regular season which of the play-off participants will receive the advantage of their site.
So the Zenit-Lokomotiv-Kuban match that took place on Tuesday had a quite tangible tournament value. Plus, many fans remembered that the last meeting of the teams, which took place in November in the first round match, turned out, without exaggeration, crazy. Back then, Lokomotiv Kuban had a brilliant first half of the match, allowing the reigning league champion to score only 25 points and going into the break with a four-point surplus. But then Krasnodar had a very bad third quarter, in which they lost 5:30 and were 21 points behind Zenit. However, this did not prevent the railroad workers from equalizing the score and losing only in the very end.
There was no repeat of that November madness yesterday. No, the game was not predictably even, and the so-called seesaw was present in it. Zenit entered the game faster and more efficiently, mainly thanks to Tom Ertel, who shot from a distance with one hundred percent accuracy and almost equally effectively handed out assists. So, after ten minutes of the game, the gap of the guests reached ten points. Lokomotiv-Kuban, however, by the middle of the second quarter, thanks to a three-point hit by Devon Akun-Purcell (for the 29-year-old forward it was the first game for Krasnodar, and it looks like they will not regret their acquisition), only four were completely behind “working” points. However, the head coach of Zenit, Javi Pascual, reacted very effectively to drawdowns in the game of his team. All the time-outs he took gave a result, so that the hosts easily managed to keep the opponent at a distance of a couple of possessions. And in the third quarter, when the guests shifted the focus of the game to the attack, it was not difficult for Zenit to take advantage of the gaps that arose in the defense of the railroad workers. Quite significant, I must say. Let’s say Richard Solomon was forgotten under the shield twice in a row. Ertel hit from a distance again. Well, the hosts got quick breaks in every third attack. And if they were all realized, the questions in this match could be removed ahead of schedule. But, apparently, this development of events instilled in the Zenit players a sense of false superiority over the opponent, which could well turn into serious trouble. At the end of the match, after Jaylen Burford’s rapid pass, only two points remained from the advantage of the hosts. He could bring victory to his team in the last seconds. But his long-range shot did not reach the goal – 73:71 in favor of Zenit.
In another match of the day, CSKA played away with Nizhny Novgorod. The army team won big and easy (109:79) and continued their record winning streak, which has already stretched for 20 matches.
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