Yekaterinburg will host a reagular season game on Friday.
Uralmash (Yekaterinburg, Russia) vs Runa (Moscow, Russia)
Time: 19:15 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, Yekaterinburg, GAUSO “Dvorets Igrovykh Vidov Sporta”.
Broadcast: TV Start, Mir Basketbola, League website
Uralmash: After 18 years of absence in elite, the Yekaterinburg team made its presence felt in the first game. Their defensive basketball helped the League newcomer to beat Zenit powerful offence, overcome a 10-point deficit and snatch a win from one of the season’s favourites. Of course, Uralmash still has plenty of weaknesses. For example, towards the end of the game, the team was unable to find a way to guard Bojan Dubljevic in the paint. Still, an experienced coach like Milos Pavicevic is probably already working on this problem.
Runa: The second finalist of the Superleague 2023 also jumped into the United League beating Avtodor. And Uralmash and Runa wins were quite different. While Uralmash worked very hard on defence and reduced their rotation to almost a minimum, Vikings defeated Avtodor with offensive basketball – only Artem Komissarov did not score points out of 12 players in the roster. Of course, the main star of the team is not any of the players, but coach Erturul Erdogan with his winning experience, and we can already see the outline of the team he plans to build: fast, running, with maximum three-point threat (in the game against the Saratov team, Runa players made over 40% of their long-range shots). Even without considering the Superleague past of Uralmash and Runa, the clash of the two coaching concepts promises to make their face-to-face game extremely interesting.
