Kazan and Moscow will host regular season games on Thursday.
UNICS (Kazan, Russia) vs Astana (Astana, Kazakhstan)
Time: 19:00 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Kazan, Basket Hall
Broadcast: TV Start, League website
UNICS: After an unexpected loss in Samara, the Kazan team rehabilitated against another Volga team. Velimir Perasovic’s team once again showed its strengths – trademark defence and combinations. Several players got good stats: Nenad Dimitrijevic made his 300th assist in the League, while the best player of the game Jalen Reynolds made a career-high 4 three-pointers out of 5. Perasovic himself was not too happy with the game. However, the Kazan team continued their pursuit to the top and a win over Astana would help to pull away from their nearest rival Runa.
Astana: The Kazakh team has already been tested against Zenit and CSKA. While the St. Petersburg team had to try hard a lot to break Astana resistance, CSKA won by a much more convincing 30 points. However, the game with the Kazan team promises to be difficult: Astana has won in Kazan only once in the 21-game rivalry history – in March 2019. One of the key factors should be a duel between UNICS’ powerful frontcourt (Louis Labeyrie and Jalen Reynolds) and the magnificent Royce Hamm, who even in the disappointing game against CSKA showed the highest level (22 points and 7 rebounds).
Runa (Moscow, Russia) vs MINSK (Minsk, Belarus)
Time: 20:00 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Moscow, Dynamo Sports Palace.
Broadcast: Match! Igra, Start Triumph, League website.
Runa: Runa have a very difficult schedule. During November, the newcomer will face all of the main contenders, as Loko and tough Enisey. So if the Moscow team want to stay in the Top-3 for a while longer, the team need to beat MINSK, who are in last place in the standings. Besides, Runa will certainly want to rehabilitate after the loss to MBA – Erturul Erdogan team had a poor start, made an impressive comeback, but Jeremiah Hill missed game-winning shot.
MINSK: Although Rostislav Vergun team is still get no wins, MINSK is playing surprisingly well on the road. And in the last game against the reular season leader, the Belarusian team got the loss but scored 84 points. It’s interesting that MINSK key players in this game was not foreigners, although Jarred Ogungbemi-Jackson was traditionally the main focus. But the leaders of team’s offense this evening was Grigory Motovilov (16 points) and 19-year-old Daniil Kasko, who is progressing from game to game and this time he set a career-high with 22 points (curiously, Kasko also played his best game last season against the Army team, scoring 18 points).
