On Monday, as part of the regular season, Zielona Gora will host Nizhny Novgorod.
October 25, Monday
Zielona Gora (Poland) — Nizhny Novgorod (Russia)
Time: 18:00 (19:00 Moscow time)
Location: Poland, Zielona Góra, CRS Hala Zielona Góra
Broadcast: TV Start, League website
Rivalry history: 6 games, Nizhny Novgorod — 4 wins, Zielona Gora – 2 wins
Zielona Gora: For the Poles, as well as for their counterparts in this game, the season did not start in the most rosy way. Both the team’s offence and the defense suffer from instability. So far, only Lokomotiv-Kuban is missing more than Zielona Gora, but the Krasnodar team is staying in the playoff zone due to the powerful offence. But according to this stat, Gora stands in the last place in the League, and at the moment only one team’s player – Nemanja Nenadic – has more than 10 points per game.
Nizhny Novgorod: Perhaps the most high-profile basketball event of this week in Russia was the Zoran Lukic appointment as the Russian national team Head Coach. The Serbian specialist can be considered practically “almost russian” coach: he has been working in Russia since 2006 and has opened up many young players to russian basketball. Lukic will combine the post of coach of the national team with a coaching post at Nizhny Novgorod, which is logical, given that Nizhny Novgorod is called the base club of the national team. Let’s recap that there are only three legionnaires in the NN team. However, this season at Nizhny has clearly not worked out yet. Taking into account the Champions League games, Nizhny won only one game out of five. So far, the main problem for Zoran Lukic’s team is the offence, weakened by injuries of Baburin and Astapkovich: in both the United League and the Champions League, Nizhny Novgorod players score a less more than 70 points per game.
What to follow: last season, both games of these rivals turned out to be truly spectacular – 100:93 and 97:93 Nizhny Novgorod won. In the second game, one of the key players was Rolands Freimanis, who played for Zielona Gora then and did everything so that his team did not lose. Now the Latvian forward will enter the floor already in the status of one of the Nizhny Novgorod leaders.
