Minsk will host a regular season game on Monday.
MINSK (Minsk, Belarus) vs. UNICS (Kazan, Russia)
Time: 18:30 (Moscow time)
Place: Belarus, Minsk, Minsk Arena
Broadcast: Match! Igra, TV Start, League website.
MINSK: Although MINSK is playing at home, hardly anyone doubts that the guests will be the favourites. The Minsk team (then Tsmoki) last defeated UNICS back in 2017, and in general, the rivalry history has only 2 wins in 20 games for MINSK. At the start of this season, MINSK is still just finding its game: the team lost twice, both times failing score more than 70 points. Although MINSK newcomer Jarred Ogungbemi-Jackson has started to prove his abilities (19 points against Enisey), he doesn’t get much support from his partners. Such offense may not be enough to put up a serious battle.
UNICS: Due to the postponement of the game with Nizhny, the Kazan team has played only one game so far in the regular season – a remake of the Finals 2023, in which they confidently beat Lokomotiv Kuban. The reigning champion looked very strong in that game, but the flu that forced the cancellation of the trip to Nizhny Novgorod must have affected the training process. It hasn’t been announced yet which UNICS players will miss the trip to Belarus (and whether anyone will miss it at all). In any case, the Kazan team has a powerful enough squad to play as favourites. However, even with all that, nobody will give UNICS a guaranteed win: in last year’s game in Minsk, the hosts managed to cope with the Kazan team offence as much as possible and was very close to a home win; only a brilliant finish by Nenad Dimitrijevic helped the guests take the lead with a less-than-impressive score – 58:54.
