There will be 5 regular season games this Monday and Tuesday.
December 2, Monday
Enisey (Russia) vs Lokomotiv-Kuban (Russia)
Time: 19:30 (15:30 МSК)
Place: Russia, Krasnoyarsk,Arena Sever
Broadcast: League’s web-site
Enisey: This season start is one of the best in the franchise history. After 6 games Enisey hold Top-4 spot. However, any loss may throw team in the middle of standings, that’s why Siberians continue to power up – they signed Chavaughn Lewis, who started this season in Nizhny Novgorod averaging 14.8 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists. This surely will power Krasnoyarsk offense up, which is already in Top-7 in scoring – 84,0 per game.
Lokomotiv-Kuban: A major victory over Zielona Gora allowed them to settle in the top three – their closest competitor is Enisey. In case of victory, Lokomotiv will not only strengthen their position, but also weaken Enisey. The last time Enisey beat Lokomotiv was more than three years ago – since then, Lokomotiv has a winning streak of 9 games in a row. It should be reminded that under the Bogdan Karaicic coaching Lokomotiv has not yet suffered a single defeat, taking two games in the VTB League and beating Limoges in the Eurocup.
UNICS (Russia) vs CSKA (Russia)
Time: 19:00 (19:00 МSК)
Place: Russia, Kazan, Basket Hall
Broadcast: MATCH! Strana
UNICS: They began to overcome the bad luck streak and have gained three victories in four games. But the failure in the game with Zenit threw them to 7th place, and defeat from CSKA will complicate the tournament position even more. According to Dimitrios Priftis, UNICS was not ready for the aggressive game of Zenit and could not oppose anything to it. The team’s offence is still not stable – despite the brilliant game of Errick McCollum, who ranks second in the list of the best scorers (20.13 points per game), the rest of the team cannot support their leader. Recently, UNICS have somewhat tightened this indicator, gaining 80.8 points per game, but still are in tenth place in terms of scoring.
CSKA: If UNICS approaches the game with a streak of losses, then CSKA have more than positive emotions: on Friday they proved that they overcame the micro-crisis that had overtaken them recently. In the Euroleague, CSKA literally “tore apart” Barcelona with a difference of 29 points.To recall that this is the first home defeat of Barca this season. In the VTB League, CSKA is now leading in scoring (91.9 points), and in the game with Barcelona they proved their efficiency, attacking with accuracy of 69% two-pointers and 47% three-pointers. Even if UNICS will be able to resist the attacking rush of CSKA, it will be extremely difficult for them to score more than CSKA. Although the duel between McCollum and Mike James (16.4 points) could potentially become a decoration of the game, it is not a fact that it will take place in its purest form: in Barcelona Dimitris Itoudis insisted on a team basketball, limiting James’s minutes and reducing the number of his shots, and that ultimately paid off.
Nizhny Novgorod (Russia) vs Khimki (Russia)
Time: 19:00 (19:00 МSК)
Place: Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, CEC Nagorny
Broadcast: MATCH! Arena
Nizhny Novgorod: After a successful start, the team of Zoran Lukic went into a long fall: if we take all the tournaments (VTB League and Champions League), then they suffered five defeats in a row. At the same time, the squad of Lukic lost both to the favorites (UNICS and CSKA), and Zielona Gora, which at that time was lower in the table. To the problems of Nizhny Novgorod was added with Chavaughn Lewis leaving the team, who at that time was the second scorer of the team. This significantly weakened not the most powerful offence line: Nizhny scored an average of almost 10 points less than Khimki (81.9 vs 91.8) and even more in terms of rebounds – in this indicator their team is at the last place in the League, and their main center Alec Brown makes 3.2 rebounds per game (for comparison, his potential counterpart for this game is Jeremy Evans 7.4).
Khimki: In the last game, the team was close to lose their first game of the season. However, the successful actions of Sergey Monia in the end of the game with Tsmoki allowed his team to extend their winning streak to 8 games. It is true that in the Euroleague Khimki suffered 5 defeats in 11 games from the start of the season – the last Khimki’s trip to Turkey ended in failure, where the team of Rimas Kurtinaitis lost to Fenerbahce. Well, Khimki did not have their first offensive option Aleksey Shved, but Fenerbahce also performed without its leaders. In the game with Nizhny Novgorod Khimki will try to overcome their functional decline, but this game will not be easy – recall that Tsmoki, although were losing to Khimki in absolutely all key elements, were only one accurate shot by Robert Lowry away from overtime.
Kalev (Estonia) vs Tsmoki-Minsk (Belarus)
Time: 19:00 (20:00 МSК)
Place: Estonia, Tallinn, Kalevi Spordihall
Broadcast: League’s web-site
Kalev: Despite three losses in a row, the success of Kalev in the game against Astana helped them return to the top five. They were able to restrain the offence of the Astana, allowed them to score only 76 points, they seriously exceeded their scoring norm (84 points against 77.4 on average for the season). In certain situations (if Enisey loses to Lokomotiv), their team will be able to squeeze the Krasnoyarsk team from the fourth line. Kalev has reasons for such calculations: their counterparts have not yet won a single victory, so their team will try to go ahead in the face-to-face confrontation with Tsmoki (at the moment they have parity – 5 wins in 10 games).
Tsmoki-Minsk: Although Tsmoki still go without victories, in the last games they looked much more confident than at the start of the season. The fact that they are not underdogs were known by their team rivals in each of the last 5 games. All of them were lost by the Rostislav Vergun team with a difference of 2-5 points, each time it came to a clutch, and only their lack of experience (and often bad luck) prevented them from “pulling out” equal endings. This was shown by the last seconds of the game with Khimki, when the Minsk team at 76:73 failed to play the combination in the last possession, and Robert Lowery, who had already become the leader of the Tsmoki offence, had to throw out two unprepared three-pointers. At the same time, the meeting with Kalev will be the 5th game on the road for Tsmoki-Minsk in 8 games, and at the moment it is the defense in away games that is the main curse of Tsmoki: on the road they allow 91.0 points per game – the third result from the end in the league.
December 3, Tuesday
Zenit (Russia) vs PARMA (Russia)
Time: 20:00 (20:00 МSК)
Place: Russia, Saint Petersburg, SC Yubileinyi
Broadcast: League’s web-site
Zenit: They finally began to get out of the losing streak, and gained two victories in a row – over the strong Enisey and the representative of the “Big Five” UNICS. Moreover, in each of these games stood out the defense of Zenit, which allowed the opponents to score only 80 points. However, so far the team of Joan Plaza still has a number of problems that do not allow saying that the crisis at the beginning of the season has already been overcome. Zenit are still playing not really well in the Euroleague – a defeat from Real Madrid put them on the last line in the table with a score of 2-9. The Spanish defense allowed Zenit to score only 71 points, and half of them were scored by two players – Evgeny Voronov and Gustavo Ayon (17 and 18 points ).
PARMA: They have never won against Zenit – 6 losses in 6 games. However, they approach the current round in a good mood. Last week, PARMA gave out perhaps its best game of the season, completely outplaying Avtodor in all components. They even managed to take the rebound from the best team of the League, which means that the presence of Gustavo Ayon in the Zenit team does not automatically make them a favorite in the fight for rebounds. It is likely that the audience will have a truly productive game – both PARMA (89.9 points per game) and Zenit (86.6) are among the four best offensive teams of the season, and both teams are fine and with a team offence – Zenit takes first place in the League for assists (22.6), PARMA – fourth (20.5).
