Shved and Booker score 50 in Kazan, Antipov save Nizhny, Juskevicius win game in Krasnoyarsk. Week in review

Round is a piece of cake!

Shved and Booker lead Khimki to win over UNICS

Game of the week took place in Kazan. UNICS and Khimki are significant rivals for each other: teams regularly met in play-offs during last two seasons, and almost each game was converted into a tough one.

This time wasn’t an exception: Khimki won 1st quarter but UNICS cut the lead till the half-time break. After 13 lead changes and 11 ties Khimki finally took control over the game in the last quarter, and in one of final possessions set the biggest difference in the game – “+10”.

After the game Kazan coach Dimitrios Priftis thanked the fans for support – “Kazan fans are usually quite but today they were active. The first time I see this.” Game of the week at Basket-Hall was visited by more than 4 thousand of spectators, it points out how critical games vs Khimki are for Kazan.

The main victory creators were Alexey Shved and Devin Booker – they scored 50 points combined!

Kyle Vinales is Zenit’s evil genius

On Friday, Kalev’s guard Kyle Vinales received League’s wild-card for participating in All-Star Game 2020, the day after that he proved his level: he scored 29 points against Zenit and led Tallinn to the first franchise victory in Saint-Petersburg!

Zenit, who played at home, gained 7-point lead in the first quarter, but couldn’t make it to the win. Roster problems – coaching staff were missing 4 key role players. However, Joan Plaza pointed out hard schedule, not cut roster – “Today we lost, but injuries are not an excuse. Even if we hadn’t them, it is still tough to play with such schedule”.

Zenit lost both games against Kalev this season. It’s interesting that in first game in Tallinn one of main heroes was Kyle Vinales: that day we scored 17 points and 6 assists.

Kalev threw Zenit off the play-off zone. The only comfort for fans was this posterizer by Austin Hollins – the guard almost flew over his opponent:

PARMA climbs up into playoffs

Slow but sure, that’s what we can say about them, as they have started the season quite unstable but with 4 victories in the row they climbed up to the 6th place.

It’s first time in 4 years when PARMA get in the playoff zone in the middle of the season.

This happened due to a successful game on the road in Krasnoyarsk. Fans probably forgot about the frost without the Sever Arena while they were watching the thriller on the court. During the game leader has changed 15 (!) times and it was impossible to predict a winner.

On the last minutes Enisey made a huge comeback and turned over 7 points in 74 seconds and caught a lead via accurate free throws of Artem Komissarov. But the last word was said by PARMA and to be precise it was said by Adas Juskevicius:

For the first time PARMA won 4 games in a row. Perm have already made 7 victories and repeated their achievement of the 2017/18 season. The team of Kazys Maxvytis has 8 more games to set their new record.

Nizhny save themselves in Poland

The comeback of the week award goes to Nizhny Novgorod as well as the victory on the road in Poland. The ending as well as the game was crazy. Nizhny was down by seven in 5 minutes before the buzzer, turned them over and took the lead but missed it and Zielona Gora were up by 3 points with 7 seconds left.

Zoran Lukic took the time out and released Pavel Antipov on the last possession and he didn’t let him down:

The game went into overtime where the hosts who had already won the game in their thoughts, could not stop Brandon Brown: Nizhny’s guard scored 12 points in an additional 5 minutes – a little less than the entire Zielona Gora.

The reaction of the Polish guard Joe Thomasson, who scored a season-high 29 points in the season, probably reflects the mood of the entire Polish team and their fans:

Tsmoki have the biggest victory of the season

The Dragons did not give up leadership in the second half of the game and brought it to their maximum distance in the score this season – +19. This result will be even more pleasant for Tsmoki fans, if you remember that before the start of the tour, Astana was in 5th place in the table.

At the same time, Belarusians demonstrated one of the best defense games: 77 points missed – the second best stat of the team this season after winning in Perm, where they allowed PARMA to score only 68.

Loko catches up with CSKA

Under the lead of Evgeny Pashutin, Lokomotiv do not lose – and this was confirmed in Saratov, where Krasnodar confidently controlled what was happening on the court throughout the game. The victory was already the seventh in a row: the Kubans have the longest running streak in the League and have already caught up with CSKA in the table.

The most valuable player in the game was Alan Williams: the guests’ center which was MVP of January left the court with 14 points and 13 rebounds – this double-double became the 5th of the season for the Loko player.

However, neither the MVP title or the high scoring confused Orlando Johnson – the Avtodor forward sent his opponent to the poster. By the way, Orlando and Alan played together for the Santa Barbara College team in the 2011/12 season.

All-Star Game Lineups

The media vote ended, and the League announced the final rosters of the national Stars of Russia and World Stars teams at the Stars-2020 Game in Moscow. You can find them here.

The League also announced 4 more players who received a wild card for their performance at the All Star Game.

IOWA will perform at the All Star Game!

Last week, the League announced those who would be responsible for the music at the All-Star Game 2020 in Moscow: the indie pop band IOWA will perform at the VTB Arena in a half break.

“The famous IOWA with its fiery dance hits fits perfectly into this format. Her music will help create an excellent atmosphere on the dance floor, right next to the court where the stars of the VTB League have just played”, said Ilona Korstin, League-s CEO.

There are few tickets left for the All Star Game, but you can still purchase them here.

All-VTB United League team of the week

Standings

Loko catches up with CSKA, Kalev knocks Zenit out of the playoffs zone