Nizhny Novgorod beat Zenit on the road 76:69 (19:19, 17:16, 17:19, 23:15)
Top scorers
Zenit: Gustavo Ayon (14+5 rebounds+3 steals), Alex Renfroe (13+6 rebounds+5 assists), Will Thomas (11+7 rebounds)
Nizhny Novgorod: Darral Willis (14), Ivan Strebkov (11), Brandon Brown (10)
Story
Zenit took control of the game and started running away from the very beginning. The guests, however, came back thanks to Darral Willis and Artem Komolov. In the end of the first quarter, Ivan Strebkov tied the game with a long range shot – 19:19. The game got even tougher in the second quarter: Nizhny didn’t let Zenit run away and took the lead. Nizhny entered the halftime break with a lead – at the last minutes of the first half Pavel Antipov scored 5 points in a row, and Anton Astapkovic’s shoot brought the lead.
The game after the break was more or less the same – teams were struggling for the lead. Dmitry Khvostov scored his first points for Zenit.
The last quarter started with Nizhny’s lead 54:53
Key moment
4 minutes before the buzzer, Brandon Brown made two threes in a row. Trailing by 1 transformed into trailing by 7 for Zenit – 70:63. Gustavo Ayon and Evgeny Voronov started comeback 70:68. Right after that, Evgeny Voronov took advantage of the guests’ mistake and went to the free throw line, but scored only once. Nizhny took the possession. Zenit with a tight pressing closed the passing lines, but Evgenii Baburin made an insane drive making it 72:69, 11 seconds before the buzzer. Zenit’s possession ended with Voronov’s miss and Renfroe’s unsportsmanlike foul on Strebkov which led to +5 and Nizhny’s possession. There was no chance to lose this lead.
Hero
Evgenii Baburin. Nizhny captain scored only 5 points, but made de facto decisive shoot in the clutch.
Stat
35:20. Nizhny bench almost doubled their opponents’ result as Brown, Antipov and Baburin played crucial roles in the game.
Comment
Nizhny Novgorod head coach Zoran Lukic:
Congrats to my team. We’ve won after a shame against Kalev. We had to make amends, and we did. It’s not easy to play in VTB League after Euroleague games and we used it. It was not the best basketball we can play, but we took advantage of chance given by Zenit.
Zenit head coach Joan Plaza:
Congrats to Nizhny, they fought and deserved to win. If you look the stats you can see the rebounds was the only good thing about us tonight. We have 18 turnovers, and they made 8 shots more than we. We had bad field goals percentage. With these turnovers and percentage it’s hard to win in Euroleague, in United League, no matter where.
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