St. Petersburg will host the regular game on Friday.
Zenit (Saint Petersburg) – Avtodor (Saratov)
Time: 19:30 (MOSCOW TIME)
Location: Russia, Saint Petersburg, Sibur Arena
Broadcast: TV Start, Match TV, League website
Rivalry history: 20 games, Zenit – 15 wins, Avtodor – 5 wins
Zenit: Despite the reigning champion status and the Super Cup-2022 win, the official season of St. Petersburg did not start too brightly. In the opening game, Xavi Pascual team lost to UNICS and a few days later in Perm with some problems won PARMA-PARI in the end. Zenit continues to rebuild after major summer changes, which is why the team had a new leader in every game. So, Igor Volkhin became the most scoring with UNICS with 18 points and Trey Tompkins played his best game for the new team in Perm, who scored a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. No one will be surprised if Thomas Heurtel proves against Avtodor, who almost completely missed the preparation for the season due to the Eurobasket 2022.
Avtodor: Shortly before the start of the season, Saratov changed the head coach and the new specialist Milos Pavichevic confirms his high level so far. In the first game Avtodor did not leave a chance for Astana and a few days later lost to Pari NN by only 2 points. The Saratov team defend tightly, very quickly turn into offense and are able to punish opponents for mistakes. Ryan Boatwright became the leader of the team, but do not underestimate Nikita Mikhailovskii and Evgeniy Minchenko – in the game with Nizhny Novgorod, the center had career high 6 blocks and for this he had only 18 minutes on the floor.
Debut: Rada Zagorac may make his debut for Avtodor in St. Petersburg. The Serbian national team forward missed the start of the season due to a back injury, but has already returned and had several training sessions with the Saratov team.
Zenit guard Caleb Homesley: «I think it will be an important game for us, in which we will try to rehabilitate. In the last game, although we won, we didn’t do a few things that we should have done. We’ve been training a lot, so I think we’ll play better this time».
Avtodor guard Ryan Boatwright: «I expect that we will prepare to Zenit with a positive attitude. We also need to focus on following our game plan, play hard and showing intensity. And at the end of the game, we’ll see where we end up».
