Astana, Perm and Moscow will host 4 regular season games on Sunday.
Astana (Astana, Kazakhstan) vs Uralmash (Yekaterinburg, Russia)
Time: 15:00 (12:00 Moscow time)
Place: Astana, Kazakhstan, Velotrek Saryarka
Broadcast: Start, League website
Astana: Last round the Kazakh team made a comeback of the week against Loko. With a fantastic third quarter against the Krasnodar team, Astana was able to get the third win and is contending for the Playoffs. Allowing only to score 4 points in a quarter is a defensive record this season. Oleg Kiselev team was able to completely shut down Loko offense, and that could be a wake-up call for Uralmash, another running team that prefers to push the tempo rather than make drives in positional possessions.
Uralmash: Of course, it won’t be easy to beat Uralmash. On Tuesday, the Yekaterinburg team set its United League scoring record with 100 points for the first time in the season, an accomplishment that neither Loko, UNICS, nor Zenit has yet achieved. On the one hand, this result was against last-place MINSK. On the other hand, despite their place in the standings, the Minsk team is not so weak. Uralmash is in solid fifth place in the League in scoring with more than 80 points per game, so Astana defense will have to work even harder.
PARMA (Perm, Russia) vs. UNICS (Kazan, Russia)
Time: 16:30 (14:30 Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Perm, UDS Molot
Broadcast: Match! Igra, Start Triumph, League website.
PARMA: The trip to St. Petersburg was the most disappointing of the season for PARMA. The Perm team lost to Zenit and scored just 54 points, the team worst in the regular season. The St. Petersburg team managed to shut down any team: Evgeny Pashutin team managed to make only 6 assists in the entire game. With such an offense, it will be hard for the hosts to expect a good result against one of the League best defensive teams. Perhaps a good move would be to apply pressure in the paint, as Runa did. PARMA knows how to fight for rebounds and may well cause UNICS as much trouble on the boards as the Moscow team did.
UNICS: The loss to Runa was a mini-sensation of the game week. Velimir Perasovic criticized his players at the press conference for good reason – the Kazan team was not like themselves that day. The team lost the rebounding battle to Runa, which is very uncharacteristic with Louis Labeyrie, Jalen Reynolds and Ismael Bako. By the way, Bako clearly couldn’t get into the right rhythm in this game – one of UNICS’ key players was limited to 2 points and didn’t grab a single rebound in 20 minutes! Considering that PARMA currently tops the list of the League’s most rebounding teams (39.8 rebounds per game), the Kazan team can’t afford another such failure.
CSKA Moscow (Moscow, Russia) vs Lokomotiv Kuban (Krasnodar, Russia)
Time: 16:30 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Moscow, Megasport
Broadcast: Match TV, Start Triumph, League website
CSKA: The Army team is planning to extend the winning streak to 10 games on Sunday. CSKA is still the only undefeated team in the League. They will try to win the anniversary win against the Krasnodar team. Loko defeated the Moscow team in Semifinals last season. And the Krasnodar team again beat CSKA at the SuperCup 2023 even despite a fantastic 44-point performance by Casper Ware. So the Army team will surely have no problems with motivation. CSKA has a super tough road series – after the Moscow game against Loko, the team has 5 consecutive road games.
Lokomotiv Kuban: After the game against Astana, Loko coach Alexander Sekulic only said only that a different team had played in the second half. It’s hard to expect a different reaction when your team leads by 15 in the first half, but at the end of the game is down by 10. The halftime had a fatal effect even on DeVaughn Akoon-Purcell, who started the game great (15 points in the first half, 2 points in the second). The team’s most dangerous scorers Jaylen Barford and Zakhar Vedischev combined 2 of 21 from the game. Over the next 3 days, Sekulic and his staff will have to figure out what caused this anomaly: 4 points in a quarter, an incredible result for a team that ranks in the Top 7 in scoring.
MBA (Moscow, Russia) vs. MINSK (Minsk, Belarus)
Time: 19:30 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Moscow, Basket Hall Moscow
Broadcast: Match! Igra, Start Triumph, League website.
MBA: Vasily Karasev team had an excellent win over Astana (101 points, the team season-high) and surely wanted to continue with a win against Enisey. But the main contender for the MVP of the season Xavier Rathan-Mayes once again made more 30 points was against this. The loss pushed MBA to the bottom of the standings, where the Moscow team share the place with Avtodor. At the same time, MBA fans still have reason for optimism. In the last 4 games, the Moscow team has noticeably improved their offensive game: the worst result was 79 points against PARMA (by the way, Evgeny Voronov scored over 20 points for the first time this season).
