On Sunday, Kazan and St. Petersburg will host 2 regular season games.
Sunday, December 12
UNICS (Russia) — Kalev (Estonia)
Time: 15:00 (Moscow time)
Location: Russia, Kazan, Basket Hall
Broadcast: TV Start, League website
Rivalry history: 23 games, UNICS — 21 wins, Kalev – 2 wins
UNICS: The Kazan team will start the game in 2nd place in the standings, but will be able to regain the lead in case of the win over Kalev. Velimir Perasovic’s team performed successfully in the Euroleague this week: Lorenzo Brown’s 26 points helped the Kazan team beat Maccabi in Tel Aviv. Now, UNICS, which did not start the Euroleague season too well, rushed in leader’s pursuit. The Kazan team equaled the number of wins with other Russian teams in the Euroleague – UNICS, Zenit and CSKA have 8 wins each. A week did not pass without personnel changes: Janis Timma failed to gain a foothold in UNICS and left the team.
Kalev: The Tallinn team still have a small margin of wins. Their closest opponent Astana, lost to Enisey, so even if Kalev loses in Kazan, it will remain in the playoff zone at least until next weekend. Roberts Stelmachers’ team will hold its next game only on January 8, so Kalev will have a good opportunity to spend almost a month’s break in the United League to strengthen the squad. But in the Champions League, things are not going well for the Estonian club: having lost to Strasbourg, the Tallinn team with 1 win in 5 games occupy the last place in their group.
Who to follow: after a very productive game at the start of the season, UNICS guard Lorenzo Brown noticeably reduced his activity — in 3 consecutive games he scored 8 points. However, in the game with Maccabi, the American set a personal best this season and added 6 rebounds and 6 assists to 26 points. Considering that a week earlier Brown scored 21 points in the game with Olympiacos, it seems that the American guard is ready to become UNICS offencive weapon again.
Zenit (Russia) — Nizhny Novgorod (Russia)
Time: 17:00 (Moscow time)
Location: Russia, Saint Petersburg, Sibur Arena
Broadcast: Match! Igra, TV Start, League website
Rivalry history: 18 games, Zenit — 12 wins, Nizhny Novgorod – 6 wins
Zenit: Unlike UNICS, Zenit cannot bring this week in the Euroleague to its asset. The loss from Fenerbahce was the 3rd in a row for the St. Petersburg team. Zenit’s front court could not match anything against Jan Vesely, who scored 32 points. For comparison, Arturas Gudaitis and Jordan Mickey scored 15 for two. This unsuccessful resultativity led Zenit moving from the leading group to the middle of the standings. In the United League, the St. Petersburg team continue to pursue UNICS and Avtodor, not losing since the beginning of October. However, during this time, Xavi Pascual’s team met with only one team from the Top-8 – Loko.
Nizhny Novgorod: After a 3-game winning streak, Nizhny Novgorod still lost to Avtodor in a very close game. Nizhny Novgorod let the most resultative team of the League score 100 points— so far this is the worst result for Nizhny Novgorod in the season (they even let the opoonents score 90 points only once, in the 1st round). Despite this, NN still occupies the 5th place in the standings, having a positive wins and losses balance. However, in this round they can be bypassed by Loko, which is propping up from the 6th place. It is interesting that next week these teams will meet in a face-to-face game. So for Nizhny Novgorod, win in the game with Zenit is very important, otherwise there is a risk that Loko will soon be able not only to overtake, but also to break away from Zoran Lukic’s team.
What to follow: Nizhny Novgorod continues to set up its semi-forced experiment of playing super baseball — the only nominal center of the team, Nikola Jovanovic, plays extremely sporadically, and missed the game with Avtodor altogether. Therefore, in the game with Zenit, ton really big NN frontcourt will have a difficult duel with Mickey and Gudaitis, who will certainly want to rehabilitate for an inarticulate game with Fenerbahce.
