Zenit will face UNICS in the opening season game.
Time: 14:00 (Moscow time)
Location: Russia, Saint Petersburg, Sibur Arena
Broadcast: TV Start, Match TV, League website
Rivalry
The rivalry between UNICS and Zenit is fundamental. In the 2017/18 season, the Kazan team beat Zenit in the regular season twice, and the game in Kazan was the opening one. Zenit’s revenge was good – winning the game for 3rd place (93:79). The brightest game of the teams was in the semi-finals of the 2016 playoffs, when UNICS beat Zenit in five games and reached the final and with it the Euroleague.
In the previous season, the teams played as many as 6 games – and 5 of them remained for Zenit. First, Xavi Pascual’s team beat UNICS twice in the regular season, and then the standings brought them to the semifinal stage. UNICS opened the score in the series, but then Zenit got three wins in a row, reached the final and became the League champion.
The last time UNICS won in St. Petersburg was more than 2 years ago: in January 2020 the Kazan team was stronger – 86:75, and the only player of that game who will play in today’s opening game was Andrey Zubkov.
In general, the rivalry score of the opposing teams in the United League is equal – 13:13.
The Experience
Zenit (29.6 years old) and UNICS (28.5 years old) are the two most experienced and aged teams this season. Vitaly Fridzon, who turns 37 on October 14, is the oldest player in the League.
What did they do this summer?
Both Zenit and UNICS had the 2022 offseason in a similar way: all foreigners left, the Russian players remained. Importantly, both clubs were able to extend their head coaches: Xavier Pascual leads the team in St. Petersburg, Velimir Perasovic leads the team in Kazan.
Zenit has 8 newcomers. For a long time, the most famous was Trey Tompkins – the same center who came to Nizhny Novgorod in 2014, after which he signed with Real Madrid, where he spent the last 7 seasons. But just before the start of the SuperCup, the St. Petersburg team announced Thomas Huertel, the French national team point guard, who came to his new club with Eurobasket 2022 silver medal. It is worth paying attention to Thomas Wimbush – after all, the forward has already managed to score the winning shot in the SuperCup final and became the MVP.
UNICS signed 11 new players in the summer. The squad will be interesting to follow: Macedonian guard Nenad Dimitrievic, French forward Louis Labeyrie and Russians Artem Zabelin, Mikhail Kulagin and Aleksander Razumov are here. But two others attract more attention: Macon and Reynolds.
Daryl Macon is known to many for playing for Dallas and Miami, and the American guard spent the last season in Panathinaikos with Dimitris Priftis, the former coach of UNICS. Jalen Reynolds is already known in the League: the center was the leader of Zenit in the 2018/19 season.
Injuries
It will be difficult for Kazan in the first game of the season, largely because Daryl Macon will not play. The guard injured his hip in the Super Cup bronze game against Partizan and continues to recover. The participation of UNICS captain Andrey Vorontsevich in the game is also questionable.
Duel
Thomas Heurtel – Nenad Dimitrijevic.
In Macon’s absence, Nenad Dimitrijevic will receive even more workload. The Macedonian is used to the role of the playmaker, but in the game in St. Petersburg, he will need not only the skills of a point guard, but also a scorer. Nenad has already shown what he can do: in the game with Partizan, he scored 30 points, helping UNICS to get the SuperCup bronze.
Zenit had questions for the playmaker position in the SuperCup. Xavier Pascual tried Joe Thomasson, Denis Zakharov and Caleb Homesley as a point guard, but the St. Petersburg offense was noticeably stalled from time to time. With Heurtel signing, Zenit offense should move on a new level. The question is whether Thomas will have time to get acclimatized during this short time in the new team, because he had his first training session in St. Petersburg only on Thursday.
Comment
«Playing against your former team is no different. As always, I just need to go out and do my job. I’m waiting for my team to win. That’s all that matters.»
Artem Klimenko spent 4 seasons in UNICS and without gaining the trust of the coaches, he moved to Zenit in the summer. And already in the SuperCup, the center showed that he could be useful, becoming the best in blocks (2.0), second in rebounds (6.0) and fourth in points (7.0).
