St. Petersburg will host a regular season game on Friday.
Zenit (St. Petersburg, Russia) vs Enisey (Krasnoyarsk, Russia)
Time: 19:30 (Moscow time)
Place: Russia, St. Petersburg, CSC Arena
Broadcast: TV Start, League website
Zenit: With a 50% win-loss ratio, Xavi Pascual team is outside Top 8. A three-game home winning streak would seem to help Zenit to strengthen, but two of three losses were at home. At the same time, the team won’t have any easy games: Zenit opponents will be PARMA, UNICS and Enisey, which is currently higher in the standings than Zenit. Another unpleasant problem for Zenit is Thomas Huertel was injured before the game with Loko. Whether the playmaker will recover for the game versus Enisey has not been reported yet. But there’s no need to worry about the team’s attitude – Sergey Karasev, celebrated his 30th birthday on October 26, and his teammates will surely want to congratulate the forward with a win.
Enisey: The much-transformed Enisey is still pleasing the fans with both goog game and results – with 4 wins in 6 games, the Siberian team share 3-5 places with Runa and Samara. Xavier Rathan-Mayes is showing outstanding basketball, and he’s clearly the best player on the team – the American guard is ready to seriously compete for the MVP if he keeps the same level of play until the end of the regular season. Rathan-Mayes had his second 30+ point game of the season against Pari NN. At the same time, Enisey new leader demonstrates his ability to make key plays at desicive moments – when Nizhny Novgorod had a 9-point lead, Rathan-Mayes scored 8 points in 1 minute and helped his team cut the difference to a minimum, which affected the game. So Zenit backcourt coul face serious challenge.
