35th Leningradka Derby, defensive UNICS and offensive Loko, Zielona Gora records and sensational Kalev, the main events of League’s life of past week.
CSKA win in Leningradka Derby for the first time since 2019
CSKA vs Khimki in the United League is always a big deal. The teams have met 34 times already and CSKA have big advantage – 25 wins and 9 defeats. But Khimki haven’t lost in Leningradka Derby for almost 2 years and the last defeat they took in June 2019.
The beginning of th 35th Derby met the expectations: Sergey Monia blocked Tornike Shengelia and Egor Vialtsev compared his teammate with Dikembe Mutombo.
Few minutes after CSKA played well at defense themselves blocking Evgeny Voronov twice:
And Mike James shut the half time buzzer with an and-one three:
However, by the half time the differential was 20 points. Khimki that played without Alexey Shved with only 2 foreigners couldn’t break CSKA’s defense in the second half as well. Moscow center Johannes Voigtmann was on fire, spent his best game in the League: 22 points on 9/11 shooting and 5 rebounds!
CSKA are still 3rd in standings while Khimki are fighting for play-offs being 7th with negative record (8-9).
Thomas and Pangos help Zenit save the leadership
Before All-Star Game leading Zenit had 2-3 game advantage. But on-the-rise UNICS and defeat from Khimki made Xavi Pascual’s squad feel less confidence: now Zenit and Kazan are separated by only 1 win.
Home game against PARMA wasn’t a piece of cake. Perm won the starting quarter and looked good by the half time, the guests were led by Adas Juskevicius: the guard scored 15 first half points and reached 500 points for PARMA.
However, the third quarter was Will Thomas’ finest hour. The Forward scored 16 points in 10 minutes, and Zenit gained 16-point lead. But it was not only Thomas to prove himself. Who knows how it would have ended if Kevin Pangos didn’t start hit threes. PARMA couldn’t find anything to answer on Thomas-Pangos duo that scored 45 points combined:
Avtodor’s defense can’t pass Lokomotiv challenge
Perhaps, the brightest game took place in Krasnodar where just seeded into EuroCup play-offs Loko hosted Avtodor.
The Lithuanian Kuban duo Kalnietis-Kuzminskas set a real show for fans: they scored 30 points combined by the half time (Mantas also had 8 assists) and were making highlights on every opportunity given.
Even though Avtodor didn’t look like outsiders and were only 4 points behind by the half time. Nevertheless, after the big break Saratov were struggling: were scoring hardly and couldn’t do anything on boards.
However, head coach Gordie Herbert said that the cause of the defeat was defense: “Lokomotiv are extremely strong at offense, so we had to play careful at defense but we didn’t manage to do it”.
Lokomotiv-Kuban are really strong offensive team this season: Evgeny Pashutin team have 2nd best offense (90,4 PPG) being outpaced only by CSKA (92,6).
Avtodor’s situation isn’t good at all: Saratov won only 3 of last 12 games and may not make it to play-offs. On Wednesday the team decided to release Gordie Herbert, Vladislav Konovalov is now acting head coach.
UNICS winning streak is now 10 games
UNICS is the most stable League’s team in 2021. Kazan won all of 10 games this year, almost all the wins were taken by defense: 8 UNICS opponents couldn’t score even 70 points!
This week Dimitrios Priftis’ team set season-high in points allowed: Kalev scored only 49 points, and Estonians’ guard Marcus Keene, who is League’s 3rd best scorer, managed to score only 3 points!
That’s not UNICS franchise-high: Kazan allowed 48 points twice (in 2012 from Donetzk, in 2013 from Spartak).
Via the victory over Kalev UNICS clinched 2021 play-offs.
Kalev are still fighting for play-off spot
Although they lost at home to Kazan, Kalev still have chances to take play-off seed. On Tuesday Tallinn brought a surprise in Poland breaking Zielona Gora’s 3-game winning streak.
Marcus Keene decided the game. Small guard, who scored 16+7 assists by the half time, was quiet almost all second half long to erupt on last two minutes: 2 accurate threes and 8 clutch points!
Besides Keene another Tallinn hero was Janari Joesaar who spent his career-high game: 29 points, 12 rebounds, 6 of them in offense. Keene and Joesaar scored 59 points combined!
Kalev are still 10th in standings after the game in Poland. But now Tallinn are only 2 wins below 8th Avtodor.
Zielona Gora set records
The loss from Kalev spoiled an impression of Polish team powerful game against Enisey a bit. Zielona Gora scored 60 points in 20 minutes and set few records at once. 117:79 :
– Best scoring of the season
– Franchise-high of the Poles in the League
– Gora’s biggest win in the tournament
Latvian duo Freimanis-Berzins were on fire, they scored 42 points and 15 rebounds combined:
Enisey’s defeat can be explained. Krasnoyarsk were getting to Poland for more than a day, Drazen Anzulovich said about this: “We had a tough way here, the road took almost 26 hours. To Moscow, then flight to Kaliningrad and 13 more hours on the bus to Poland”.
Time difference between Krasnoyarsk and Zielona Gora is 6 hours. At the moment of the tip-off (18:00) it was midnight in Krasnoyarsk.
Stat of the week
2000. The game between Gora and Enisey was 2000th for the United League in history of the championship.
Zenit, UNICS and Zielona Gora clinched the play-offs
3 League teams at once clinched 2021 play-offs. Zenit (16-3) and UNICS (15-4) are two top-spotted teams in standings.
Zielona Gora (13-9) are fifth but they spent 22 of 24 regular season games and can’t fall below 8th spot.
Team of the week
Standings
