Samara and Moscow will host the regular season games on Monday.
Samara (Samara) – UNICS (Kazan)
Time: 19:00 (18:00 Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Samara, SCC Dvorets Sporta
Broadcast: TV Start, League website
Samara: The Volga team is not losing this year yet – in January Astana and Avtodor were beaten. This allowed the League newcomer to get the 7th place. But to win 3 games in a row for the first time in the League, Samara needs to show the best basketball. After all UNICS has not lost for more than a month. However, in November, Sergey Bazarevich team was close to a sensation in Kazan – in the last quarter, Samara led, but failed as Reynolds – Labeyrie duo helped the Kazan team. In the home Volga derby against UNICS, defense will play a crucial role – after all, the Kazan team coaching staff has a lot of options in offense. And, of course, it is important that not only the leaders show a high level, but also the role players, who, have the coach confidence in recent games.
UNICS: The New Year’s break clearly did not benefit the Kazan team. UNICS won both games and extended the streak to 6 wins in a row, but with both MBA and PARMA-PARI, the result was decided only in the endings. The game in Samara will also not be the easiest. Firstly, the League newcomer in January significantly increased and won 2 games in a row. Secondly, in the game in Kazan, Samara played well for a long time and even led for a while. For UNICS, it is important to safe the team’s confidence and correctly set the offense. Of course, special attention should be focused on Jordan Theodore – the guard joined Samara during the season is one of the most dangerous players of this team.
MBA (Moscow) – Zenit (Saint Petersburg)
Time: 20:00 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Moscow, Basket Hall Moscow
Broadcast: TV Start, Match TV, League website
MBA: The League newcomer has already completed the key task for the season – the team joined Group A at the second stage of the regular season and clinched to the playoffs. But now MBA plans to climb as high as possible in the standings. It will be extremely difficult to do this in a game with the reigning champion – Zenit won by 25 in the previous game in St. Petersburg. In addition, MBA is experiencing problems due to injuries, which is why in Krasnoyarsk the coaching staff was forced to use Egor Pokinko. The Moscow team has already demonstrated character more than once and will try to do it with Zenit on Monday. Task number one is to guard Thomas Huertel as he has been demonstrating impressive stats for several months.
Zenit: The St. Petersburg team winning streak has already reached 4 games. At the same time, Zenit has a complicated schedule: the reigning champion started the year in Minsk, then flew to Astana and on Tuesday hosted Loko. Zenit and MBA are neighbors in the standings, but the St. Petersburg team looks like clear favorites as comparing rosters. Unlike the opponents, almost all of Zenit players are healthy and the leaders are in good shape. The team had a week to prepare and the coaching staff probably found all the opponents weaknesses. Zenit will try to put as much pressure on playmakers as the Moscow team has problems with turning the ball over a lot. This may work, as both key guards Khomenko and Konovalov are now unavailable.
