UNICS win in Krasnoyarsk and continue the preparation for Loko

UNICS win in Krasnoyarsk and continue the preparation for Loko

UNICS beat Enisey on the road – 84:77 (31:20, 16:13, 25:25, 12:19).

Top scorers
Enisey: Leyton Hammonds (21 + 6 rebounds), Dustin Hogue (10), Tyus Battle (10), Sergey Mitusov (10).
UNICS: Artem Klimenko (14), Okaro White (11), Jamar Smith (10), Isaiah Canaan (10).

Story
In this meeting, both teams were solving their tournament problems. Success in Krasnoyarsk would guarantee UNICS a place in the top three. For Enisey, the victory was the only chance to continue the fight for the 10th place.

The guests began to justify the status of the front-runners already in the opening of the meeting. It took them only a minute to create a gap of 8 points – 8:0. At some point, the game turned into a duel between Russian centers. Artem Klimenko was more efficient than Ilya Popov, which allowed UNICS to develop the advantage. By the middle of the quarter, the Kazan team had a double-digit lead, so it remained by the end of the first quarter – 31:20.

At the start of the second quarter, Mikhail Kulagin left the floor after a painful fall. Without their leader, the Siberians scored only 13 points in a quarter. Kazan also did not shine in offense, but due to the individual skill of their foreigners, they were able to further increase the lead in the score by the long break – 47:33.

Key moment
In the second half of the meeting, the Siberians fought on equal terms with an opponent for a long time. But it never came to a comeback. The guests controlled the pace, did not allow the Krasnoyarsk team to run, and in the tough positional game, the class of players and the depth of the squad allowed Kazan to maintain a comfortable advantage. Enisey was able to get closer to the opponent at a distance of less than 10 points only at the last minute, when the fate of the game had already been decided.

Thanks to this victory, UNICS guaranteed itself a place in the top three. Kazan will play the second line in the last round in the game against Lokomotiv-Kuban. Enisey finally lost the chance to catch up with Kalev in the fight for 10th place.

Hero
Artem Klimenko became a real hero of the starting quarter of the game. In the first 10 minutes, he updated his season-hogh with 14 points (shots from the field – 4 out of 4, free throws – 6 out of 6). In the future, the center no longer hit the rim, but the scored at the start was enough for him to become the top scorer at the end of the meeting with UNICS.

Stat
0 – number of lead changes in the game. UNICS took the lead in the very first possession and never lost it or even allowed to even the score.

Comments
Enisey head coach Drazen Anzulovich:
– Congratulations to UNICS on the victory. We must be objective and admit that Kazan has a much stronger team. We tried to fight, but without organizing the game in the offense, due to the absence of our point guards, it was difficult. As you know, Mathews has been injured for a long time, Johnson was injured and has not yet recovered, today during the game Mikhail Kulagin received a concussion.
In order to win against such a strong opponent, it is necessary that each player, especially our foreigners, show 100% of their capabilities. Unfortunately, this was not the case today. And this is exactly what we did not have enough to impose a fight and win over UNICS.

UNICS head coach Dimitrios Priftis:
– At the moment we are in a very tight and heavy schedule. Games take place almost every two or three days and for various reasons some players of the roster are absent. We went through a difficult road before playing with Enisey. Enisey is a good team, they always fight to the end. And today they used different tactics of struggle, changed the style of playing in defense, tried to play in a fast break. In addition, this season the Krasnoyarsk basketball players faced difficult staffing problems, including the coronavirus-caused ones.

Next
Enisey: April 25 vs Kalev
UNICS: April 25 vs Lokomotiv-Kuban

Photo 22/04/2021 Enisey-UNICS 77:84