The first month of the new season is over, and it’s time to sum it up. Who is in the lead? How did the newcomers prove? What happens in the middle of the standings?
The reigning champion is not impressive as CSKA and UNICS
During the first month of the new season, Zenit played with the Moscow and the Kazan team. The results were disappointing – two lossess and both at home.
Both losses can be explained: in the game versus UNICS, Zenit guard Thomas Heutel did not have such chemistry with his teammates. Xavier Pascual let the French guard to play 30 minutes and it was noticeable that the connections were not yet established. And at the same time, Zenit almost took UNICS into overtime – and Heurtel scored the equalizer.
A month later, CSKA arrived in St. Petersburg, which literally crushed Zenit in the first 30 minutes. Four the St. Petersburg team bigmen were injured or played on injections, so October MVP Nikola Milutinov did what he wanted in the paint: got 22 points, 10 rebounds, made some dunks. And Zenit almost escaped again, came back from trailing by 14 to only 2 points in the last minute.
But in general, this Zenit (there are 9 newcomers in the team) is not impressive yet. And in games against less big teams they won all of them (although in Perm and Samara it was close), but with such big teams the team lost.
What can not be said about UNICS and CSKA. The Kazan team has also been thoroughly refreshed – it’s easier to say who stayed from last season than the newcomers list. But looking at the chemistry, it feels like this team has been playing together for a very long time. UNICS had the best defense in October (they let score only 68.7 points per game), control the ball well (only 12.0 turnovers) and made a good amount of steals (10.6 steals). At the same time, Daryl Macon, who was considered the most high-profile signing in the summer, has not played a single game for UNICS yet.
CSKA is also doing well – especially against the pre-season talk that the Army men about weaker roster and no longer be in the first roles in the League. The first month shows that this is not the case: Emil Rajkovic does his job perfectly. The Macedonian coach quickly built up a good team with all the stars and already seems to know how to use the players. CSKA also got lycky with Dallas Moore. Initially, the guard came to the team on a 1.5-month contract, but his game made him to sign a long-term and justified the trust in St. Petersburg – Moore made shots against Zenit allowed CSKA to go further in the score.
Now there are two teams in the League, CSKA and UNICS go undefeated, but this will change very soon: on November 10, the Army team will host UNICS in Moscow.
Samara got punched, but then has already recovered
There was a lot of talk about Samara before the start of the season – up to the point that the League newcomer at the end of the season will be higher than CSKA. The Army team stopped these conversations in early October, without giving the Volga team a chance in their game.
The loss in Krasnodar finally broke up the team and now the fans are talking about Samara in a different way: the legionnaires are old and helpless and the coach does not trust Russian players. In general, look at MBA – this is a normal newcomer.
Samara continued to work with ignoring the rumors and the result came. The win over Enisey in overtime relieved the team psychologically, and in the Volga derby, the team beat Nizhny Novgorod – 90:52. No one understood what happened, but Zoran Lukic took the blame for the dloss on himself just in case. Zenit escaped with great difficulty in Samara, but Bazarevich team has not yet allowed any more losses. Now Samara is on the 4th place and the team is gradually getting used to their roles. Ennis and Knight are leaders, Malcolm Thomas is still the same important role player as in Shved’s Khimki, Rivers is ready to make a performance a couple of times a month and the Russian players are gaining the coach’s trust. Maybe Samara won’t make a sensation in the spring, but this team should definitely go into the playoffs.
MBA has so far more efficiency than effectiveness
As in Samara case, the expectations from MBA game did not coincide with reality – only in a positive sense. The team without foreign players in the roster showed the best debut in the League history (3 wins in a row and the total points difference is +66), loudly beat Loko on the road…
And then, after game with CSKA, the team got 3 losses in a row. Of course, if we ignore the beautiful headlines and the search for information guides, it becomes clear that in the first weeks the Moscow team was very lucky with the schedule and then getting leaders, losing also to PARMA-PARI.
At the end of the month, MBA is in the Top 6 and it already feels like this is the team max. Is there any talent here? Definitely. Has the coaching staff make a desire to play till the end? Without a doubt. But in games with top teams, the quality is the real-deal and in such head-to-heads there should be a player in the team who will take responsibility and is guaranteed to score 20. Is there one in MBA? Probably not, MBA is about the shots and game minutes equitable distribution, rather than about a superhero and his assistants.
From this style of team building (and the lack of athletic legionnaires), magnificence also suffers. Right now, MBA is one of the most boring team in the League, with an average of less than one dunk per game. Nikola Milutinov, for example, has 2.4 dunks per game. It hardly affects the final result, but it is quite spectacular.
Loko experiment: young players suffering or does Sekulic need time?
A month after the start of the season, Loko closes the Top-8 with 3 wins and 4 losses. Which, of course, is extremely unusual, remembering how last year Loko palyed against CSKA in the semifinals.
What are Loko missing right now? First of all, the roster depth. There is a starting-5, where everyone plays at least 26 minutes. Vedishchev, Kvitkovskikh and Emchenko come off the bench at more or less acceptable minutes, but only Zakhar adds momentum to the team. Kvitkovskikh is still getting used to the new conditions after Avtodor, and Emchenko is not impressive this season yet.
Then the offensive instability came out. With Jaylen Barford, the best scorer of the team, they play very tightly, while he takes on a lot of shots – 16 on average per game. And if Darral Willis has added in recent games, then everyone else are not so stable and it will be difficult to do this without huge roster.
Head coach Alexandr Sekulic, who has been working with young teams for a long time, says that it takes time to move to a new level. But Loko does not have much time: if by mid-January the Krasnodar team will not be in the Top 6, then in the next 3 months they will have to fight for the 2 remaining places to the playoffs, if they will miss it, it will be a failure for last year’s semi-finalist.
Who will take Loko place in the Top 4?
It is already noticeable that there has been a different Top 4. And if few people doubt that CSKA, UNICS and Zenit will get into the semis, then one more place is still vacant. According to the results of the first month, there are 4 obvious contenders – PARMA-PARI, Pari NN, Avtodor and Samara.
All 4 teams are well-equipped and play under experienced coaches, who have already proved their worth in the League, except Avtodor with coach Pavichevic. Therefore, the regular season task for each of these teams becomes more complicated: you need not only to be in the playoffs, but also to take a place in the Top 5 – so as not to get into the first round on someone from the super trio.
Is Enisey problem a lack of basketball intelligence?
Enisey could have been safely in 4th place after the first month of the season, but instead the Siberian team is on the 10th place with 1 win and 5 losses. The thing is that in 7 games the Krasnoyarsk team have already played 2 games with overtimes and also had tense ending against PARMA-PARI – and lost everywhere.
Drazen Anzulovic explains this in a rather unusual way: «We don’t have enough basketball intelligence to make the right decision in the end». Can this be fixed during the season? Probably, there is only one solution: to get such a lead during the game that the opponent will not be able to make a comeback in the last minutes.
At the same time, Enisey really has a pretty strong team and don’t be surprised if this team significantly improves the standings place at the end of the year.
PARMA-PARI is the best in attendance
Perm once again proves that it can get the title of the most basketball city in Russia. At the first home game of the season with Zenit, PARMA-PARI set a season high in attendance: there were 6,253 fans in Molot. On average, 4,876 fans come to the game in Perm.
St. Petersburg is quite a bit behind Perm. Zenit almost updated the attendance high, having 6,186 fans against CSKA. The average attendance at Sibur Arena this season is 4,605 fans.
MVP of the Month
Nikola Milutinov became the most effective player in October and CSKA won all 6 games at the start of the season. The Serbian center averaged 13.5 points and 7.7 rebounds and was named the MVP of the Month.
Highlight of the month
The best highlight of October took place in Krasnoyarsk. PARMA-PARI had tense ensing against Enisey in Krasnoyarsk and Bryon Allen scored 2 shots in a row, and his second shot became the game-winning:
Numbers and facts
CSKA has the best offense of the season: on average, the Moscow team score 96.4 points. The Army team are still going for a record, because Loko 2015/16 had the best regular season performance in the League history – 95.5 points.
The best scoring player of the season is Marcos Knight from Samara with 18.7 points per game. At the same time, the guard is incredibly stable: he scored at least 16 points every game (and no more than 23). The percentages are also impressive: 58.3% – two-pointers, 57.1% – three-pointers. The best scoring Russian player is Alexey Shved with 15.7 points per game. UNICS center Jalen Reynolds has a season high: 30 points with the MBA.
The most spectacular player of the season is Nikola Milutinov. CSKA center has an average of 2.3 dunks per game – this is more than 5 League teams.
The most shooting team is MBA. The League newcomer has 42.9% of three-pointers. UNICS has the best shooter: Anthony Brown has 68.2% of thee-pointers. And Caleb Homesley has the season high in three-pointers made, 7 threes against Samara.
The 21-year-old PARMA–PARI forward Danila Pokhodiaev had the most playing time in one game – 41.5 minutes against Loko. Pavel Antipov, Andrey Lopatin, Evgenii Baburin and Jermaine Love also played more than 40 minutes per game this season.
The main block shot leader in the League is Evgeny Minchenko. On average, Avtodor center has 2.4 blocks and this despite the fact that last season he had 0.6 blocks. He also gets season high in blocks in 1 game – 6 against Pari NN.
