St. Petersburg will host a regular season game on Tuesday.
Zenit (St. Petersburg, Russia) vs. MBA (Moscow, Russia)
Time: 19:30 (Moscow time)
Venue: Russia, St. Petersburg, KSK Arena
Broadcast: Match! Igra, TV Start, League website.
Zenit: The rivalry of Zenit and MBA is rather principled, as the Moscow team head coach Vasily Karasev led Zenit from the club’s foundation in 2014 until the end of 2018, and his son Sergey is still one of the team’s leading players (21 points in the last round). Last season, including the Russian Cup and Playoffs, the calendar brought these teams together nine times, and so far this duel is won by Zenit with a clear advantage – 7 wins and only 2 losses. However, that’s a thing of the past, and now both MBA and Zenit are rolling into the season equally hard. On Saturday, the St. Petersburg team won confidently game over Astana, but Xavier Pascual was not satisfied with the game: “We need to learn to avoid the mistakes we had during the game with Astana”. Of course, the St. Petersburg team will go into the game as favourites anyway, but the game is unlikely to be an easy walk.
MBA: However, the start of the season has not been easy for the Moscow team either. With three losses in four games, the team has settled into the bottom of the standings, and while there’s still plenty of time to rectify the situation, another setback will give MBA rivals a significant head start. The team busy schedule doesn’t make life any easier. On 14 October, Vasily Karasev team played a tough game against Samara, in which MBA got back into the game three times and by the end of the game was visibly exhausted. Much of the game will depend on Daniil Kasatkin shape. One of MBA’s key offensive players last year, this season Kasatkin is still unable to find his shot and having 16% three-poiner accuracy. In the last two games, he has made only one long-range shot out of ten. Andrey Lopatin, who analysts had predicted before the season to move up to the next level, has also seen declining. If this duo can’t return to their usual level in the near future, MBA’s prospects will be much worse than they appeared in the offseason.
