On Sunday and Monday there will be 6 regular season games.
February 9, Sunday
UNICS (Russia) vs Tsmoki-Minsk (Belarus)
Time: 19:00 (19:00 МSК)
Place: Russia, Kazan, Basket Hall
Broadcast: Match! Strana
UNICS: Last week Kazan couldn’t hold Khimki at home, but still holds 4th spot. This position will be saved even in case of loss from Tsmoki, but this looks quite unreal because in 13 games Tsmoki won only twice. However, their first meeting this season almost ended up in Tsmoki’s win. Then, Errick McCollum scored 33 points made a fatal mistake but positive advantage of UNICS was saved by Mangelis Vantzaris, Despite the Khimki’s win, Kazan are in good mood before the game – on Wednesday they beat Lietuvos Rytas in Eurocup Top-16 and now hold first place in group with Monaco, and the MVP of the game was Jamar Smith with 24 points.
Tsmoki-Minsk: Rostislav Vergun’s team gradually finds its rythm, and maybe it’s too late for fighting for play-off spots but Minsk doesn’t give up. Game vs Astana was the biggest win this season for the – +19. With the help of it they caught up Avtodor in Standings – although they still hold last place they now have the same amount of wins as Saratov. By the way, it is Avtodor Minsk will play against in the next round, and Tsmoki’s schedule saves play-off chances. Of the Big teams the only rivals for Tsmoki will be weak Zenit.
Zielona Gora (Poland) vs Avtodor (Russia)
Time: 20:00 (22:00 МSК)
Place: Poland, Zielona Gora, CRS Hala Zielona Góra
Broadcast: League’s web-site
Zielona Gora: In the last round Zielona Gora had chances to settle in top-8. But instead of this the Polish, as Zan Tabak said, gave away a won game – after letting fatal three on the last seconds by Pavel Antipov, and then losing on overtime. The game against Avtodor will be the opportunity to get back to the play-off zone. What is most interesting, that this season Avtodor played its first game of the year against Zielona Gora – in this thriller the guests disappointed Saratov at their court, snatching the victory in the end via Joe Thomasson’s accuracy.
Avtodor: A little upliftment that occured after Predrag Krunic’s arrival was changed with a bad streak: Avtodor lost 6 consecutive games and now it would be hard to fight for the play-off spot. They didn’t lose theoretical chances to participate in play-offs but they have no room for mistakes. To save the season Avtodor’s management made critical changes – unsuccessful coach had to leave the team, and head coach position was given to Donaldas Kairys. In the last month the Lithuanian specialist led Kalev to play-offs for the first time in franchise history. Lately, Kairys was working in Olympiacos coaching staff.
February 10, Monday
Enisey (Russia) vs Kalev (Estonia)
Time: 19:30 (15:30 МSК)
Place: Russia, Krasnoyarsk, Arena Sever
Broadcast: League’s web-site
Enisey: Recently they were among the four best teams in the League. However, then roster of Drazen Anzulovic went into a long peak – for five consecutive games they could not win. A small cheer was a win in FIBA Europe Cup with the Dutch Leiden, where Denis Zakharov, who scored 28 points, played especially well. Despite this victory, Enisey did not manage to break into the playoffs of the tournament and finished their Eurocup participation this season. Now they will be able to concentrate on recovering the situation in the United League, where Enisey has fallen to 10th place. According to Drazen Anzulovic, the game with Leyden was primarily part of the preparation for the game against Kalev, which could become one of the key for Enisey in the final segment of the championship.
Kalev: Although the Tallinn team is fifth in the table, there is only one victory between them and Enisey, so the tournament situation could change dramatically already in this round. This season Kalev has already beaten their Krasnoyarsk counterparts, and this victory was the fifth in a row for games in Tallinn – the last time Enisey prevailed over Kalev was in 2017. However, the team of Roberts Stelmahers can not be considered as a favorite. Despite the high position in the table, Kalev is still by far the worst League team in terms of scoring. Moreover, the Tallinn team is scoring just 76.7 points per game on the road, allowing nearly 90. True, it was against the Siberians that Kalev showed its record performance this season – 94 points. Mainly the reason for this was the performance of Janari Joesaar, who made a double-double – 23 + 13 rebounds.
Astana (Kazakhstan) vs CSKA (Russia)
Time: 19:30 (16:30 МSК)
Place: Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan, Zhekpe-Zhek
Broadcast: Match! Igra
Astana: The team from Nur-Sultan continues to confirm the status of the “home” team of the League. If Astana has so far managed to win only one game on the road since the beginning of the season, then at home they also lost only once – two months ago in a game with Nizhny Novgorod. But although the squad of Emil Rajkovikj plays two games in a row on their court, their opponents will be as difficult as possible – in this round it’s CSKA and Khimki in the next, two leaders of the current regular season. This season, Astana has already met with CSKA and lost with a double-digit gap, despite the powerful game of Malcolm Hill and Dusan Ristic, who scored 50 points combined. Recall that in the history of the League, they have never been able to celebrate the triumph in the game against CSKA – if they lose this time, the defeat will be the twentieth in a row.
CSKA: CSKA approached the game with Astana with the background of defeats in Euroleague. The team held their last game in the United League at the end of January, but CSKA schedule did not become less stressful from this.The Red-blues in the Euroleague defeated their principal rival – Khimki, but then lost twice. And if the outcome of the game with Ephesus was decided in the end, then CSKA lost to Olympiacos with a big gap. According to Dimitris Itoudis, his team in this game showed the worst utility stat in history. Like it or not but the Moscow team looks noticeably tired – the ongoing struggle on two fronts, complicated by personnel losses, is real. The chance for Astana is to use the Olympiakos recipe and impose hard pressure on CSKA, for whom the game in Nur-Sultan will be the fourth in 10 days.
Lokomotiv-Kuban (Russia) vs Zenit (Russia)
Time: 19:30 (19:30 МSК)
Place: Russia, Krasnodar, Basket Hall
Broadcast: Match TV
Lokomotiv-Kuban: Kuban continue their winning streak in the United League – success in the game against Avtodor was the seventh in a row for them. Under the leadership of Evgeny Pashutin, Loko has not lost even once – as a result, he will lead the Russian Stars team at the All-Star Game. Their center Alan Williams had a great January and became the MVP of the League in this month with 16.7 points and 12.0 rebounds per game. Williams made another double-double (14 + 13) in the game with Avtodor. With the roster problems of Zenit now Kuban look like a clear favorite of the game.
Zenit: For them February began extremely unsuccessfully. It started with a defeat by Kalev, which once again threw the Zenit from the Top Eight. This was followed by two failures in the Euroleague – first the blue-white-blue lost in a bitter game to Fenerbahce, and then they lost to Panathinaikos. This is largely due to injuries that knocked out the roster – over the past month, Colton Iverson, Alex Renfroe and Mateusz Ponitka have dropped out for different periods. The main hope of the Zenit fans is, oddly enough, the away status of the game: if at home they won only 1 victory in 8 game (the worst stat in the League), then they won 5 games out of 7 on the road.
Khimki (Russia) vs Nizhny Novgorod (Russia)
Time: 19:30 (19:30 МSК)
Place: Russia, Khimki, BCMO
Broadcast: Match! Igra
Khimki: The team is still favourite not only in this particular game but the whole regular season. Despite Khimki’s leader status, lots of problems will disturb them from their potential. First of all, it’s injuries, that especially influence their frontcourt. Jeremy Evans and Anthony Gill are still injured, recently Sergey Karasev joined them, he will miss at least a month. As a result, in Euroleague’s game vs Crvena Zvezda only 4 frontcourt players higher than 2 meters wee in roster – Sergey Monia, Devin Booker, Jonas Jerebko and Janis Timma. What’s important, even with this cut roster Khimki played tough, with full-court pressing that made the Serbians make 21 turnovers that led to a loss. However, Khimki’s management seriously puzzled by looking for frontcourt power up – that’s why they signed Thomas Robinson: 2012 draft 5th pick, played for Khimki in 2017/18 season.
Nizhny Novgorod: However, Nizhny Novgorod suffer from injury losses more concerning less resources. In game vs Zielona Gora team’s scoring and rebounding leader Darral Willis got injured. The examination showed that leading Bigman will have to miss more than 3 months. Despite that, without Willis Nizny firstly in a tight one beat Zielona Gora in overtime, and then in Champion’s league beat Latvian VEF and made it to the next stage from third place. However, Khimki are better team, which means that Nizhny will have to do the best not to lose 4th in 5 games.
