Zenit beat Enisey at home – 84:71 (25:16, 31:13, 15:18, 13:24).
Top scorers
Zenit: Tarik Black (12), Kevin Pangos (10), Will Thomas (10).
Enisey: Jordan Mathews (20), Dustin Hogue (14 + 7 rebounds), Tyus Battle (11 + 5 rebounds + 5 assists), Mikhail Kulagin (10 + 6 assists).
Story
From the first minutes the home team forced a slow, positional basketball game. This pace should have allowed Zenit to capitalize on their class advantage, while negating Enisey’s advantage in freshness. This approach paid off. Zenit, thanks to the efforts of Will Thomas and Mateusz Ponitka, took control from the very first minutes. After that, the everyone else got going. Kevin Pangos and Billy Baron’s aggressive play allowed the home team to extend their lead. The first quarter ended with a buzzer by Baron, giving the Blue and White a nine-point lead, 25-16.
Zenit continued to dominate in the second 10 minutes. While the visitors had only Tyus Battle player on offense, the home team relied on the strength of several other players. Zenit simultaneously shot well, both from the paint and beyond the arc. The three-point factor was decisive in the end. The home team hit 9 of 13 shots from beyond the arc (69%) in the first half, giving them a 27-point lead, 56-29.
This season Zenit has trouble playing well after the big break. In this game they came out in the third quarter unmotivated. However, Enisey could not take much advantage of the situation. On occasion they managed to pull off some good offensive plays. Dustin Hogue and Ilia Popov kept their opponents under the basket, Artem Komissarov and Jordan Mathews stepped up, and Mikhail Kulagin started shooting. Krasnoyarsk reduced their lack, but their first-half failure was too much to overcome. As a result, the visitors never got closer than 13 points.
That win allowed Zenit to retain their lead in the regular season. For Enisey, though, it was their fourth straight setback. The Siberians dropped to eleventh place, one spot behind Astana.
Hero
Will Thomas was the most efficient player on the winning team (14). The forward also had 10 points and 4 rebounds in that game.
Stat
12 of 22 (54%) — high percentage of three-pointers that allowed Zenit to win this game.
Comments
Zenit head coach Xavier Pascual:
– First of all, I want to wish all the best to Enisey at the end of the season. We played hard from the very beginning, both on defense and offense, and we passed the ball well, especially in the first half. In the second half we controlled the minutes of the basketball players on the court to give rest to a few important players who had a lot of playtime this week. We controlled the game until the end. We end this week with three games and are ready to start a new week with some very important games.
Enisey head coach Drazen Anzulovich:
– Congratulations to Zenit. They were much better throughout the game, they were stronger, faster. We have a lot of problems. For example, today at the game we had only four guards, and after Yakushin’s injury we were left with three. All week we were training with eight, maximum nine players. Now we have a lot of problems because of numerous injuries, that’s the first problem we have to solve.
Next
Zenit: March 23 @ Avtodor
Enisey: March 28 vs Nizhny Novgorod
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