| Kazan UNICS beat a competitor from the “Big Three” Last game weekend of the Russian basketball championship among men's teams, the centerpiece was the match between teams from the so-called “Big Three”. In the meeting between Kazan UNICS and Perm Ural Great, which was directly witnessed by seven thousand spectators gathered in the stands of the Basket Hall in the capital of Tatarstan, the Volga residents celebrated the victory - 87:72. The best player of the match, of course, was UNICS playmaker American Lamarr Greer, who showed a grandmaster performance - 32 points.
Thus, the silver medalists of the last championship, the Permians, led by head coach Sergei Belov, suffered their second defeat this season, and the Kazan team secured 2nd place in the standings. Stanislav Eremin's team experienced the bitterness of failure only once, when they lost to CSKA in Moscow. However, it is too early to draw even preliminary conclusions about the relationship between the Big Three teams, because the first round match between the CSKA team and the Perm team will take place only on December 25th.
The equal fight between UNICS and Ural Great took place only in the opening quarter. Already in the middle of the next ten minutes, the Kazan team made a powerful push and noticeably broke away from the opponent in the score. Many basketball players from both teams are famous for their ability to accurately execute three-point shots, but this time only Greer, who hit the target from distance four times, and Perm’s Chikalkin, whose two attempts to hit the target from distance were successful, succeeded in this element of the game. It was after Chikalkin’s well-aimed shot that Ural-Great led 31:26, but then the guests had a disastrous stretch when, within a few minutes, UNICS responded to their two points with 15. After a long break, Eremin’s team, who had caught the courage and the game, brought the advantage to 20 points , and this is where the intrigue in the match died. The Kazan club made an excellent gift to its president Evgeny Bogachev, who celebrated his fifth anniversary in this position.
The capital's Dynamo team played a home match with the championship outsider Novosibirsk Lokomotiv without Bosnian Haris Muezinovic. On the eve of the next round, the directorate of the Russian Championship fined him $300 and imposed a five-match disqualification for a hooligan act during the match Dynamo lost in Tula against the local Arsenal. Muezinovic then knocked out the opposing team player Andrei Laletin with a head blow and was sent off the court.
The absence of the fighter did not in any way affect the outcome of the match; Lokomotiv is still clearly falling out of the company of the strongest. Dynamo won 87:65, and striker Andrei Fetisov appeared in the ranks of the blue and white for the first time this season. In the early 90s, this basketball player was considered perhaps the most talented in the country, but in the end his career, by and large, did not take place. Andrey wandered from club to club, traveled around foreign countries, and last season he could not stay in the UNICS lineup. It is unlikely that his arrival at Dynamo can be considered a godsend for the capital team. In the next round, the “blue and white” will meet with “Khimki” near Moscow. If Dynamo fails to win in this important game, which is very likely, their position in the championship will become catastrophic.
“Khimki” was defeated by CSKA in the last round - 80:106, but another team from the Moscow region, a newcomer to the Super League Dynamo, won its fifth victory in a row, celebrating success on the road in Rostov-on-Don - 72:68. Arsenal continues to pleasantly surprise, the Tula team beat Avtodor Saratov at home - 86:81.
Another interesting event occurred in the Euroleague, held under the auspices of the continental branch of the International Basketball Federation. Greek PAOK was withdrawn from the competition due to failure to appear for the match against PTT (Türkiye). The results of all previously held games by PAOK have been cancelled. The Greeks played in the same group with UNICS, so the Volga team was left without a well-deserved away victory, although this did not affect their leadership in any way. And the FIBA Euroleague, which was already frankly weak in terms of its participants, lost one of the few worthy teams. Ilya TRISVIATSKY |
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