In the final series they will play against CSKA again

Russian Basketball Championship

CSKA and Khimki, like a year ago, will meet in the final of the Russian Championship. Yesterday, the army team in Kazan won the third match in a row against UNICS, ending the series with a shutout victory. Khimki, which became the finalists the day before, needed one more game to defeat Spartak St. Petersburg.

Spartak, having unexpectedly won in the quarterfinals against Dynamo Moscow, which was much better equipped than the St. Petersburg club, has already exceeded its goal for the season. It was hard to expect that the basketball players of “Spartak” would be able to create another sensation and knock out another favorite from the fight for gold - the Moscow region “Khimki”, which, in order to save the season, simply needed to reach the final of the Russian championship. This year, the Moscow Region club failed in the remaining tournaments in which it participated: first it failed to reach the Final Four of the Russian Cup, losing in the quarter finals in the Moscow Region derby to Triumph, then it suffered a disappointing defeat in the final of the ULEB Cup from the Lithuanian “Lietuvos Rytas”, having missed the opportunity to get a ticket to the Euroleague for the next season. Reaching the final of the Russian Championship means that Khimki will most likely still compete in the main Eurocup. Although the Euroleague reform project has not yet been finalized, it is assumed that both finalists of the Russian championship will participate in the next competition.

The victory over Spartak was not easy for the Khimki team. The St. Petersburgers had a great fight with the basketball players from the Moscow region and even managed to win one match on a foreign court, but they were not enough for more. The matches in St. Petersburg turned out to be stubborn, Spartak did not change its style, trying to impose aggressive, fast basketball on the opponent. But in the end, the hosts still didn’t have enough squad depth to beat Khimki again. On Monday, in the fourth match of the series, Spartak made an impressive breakthrough at the start, winning the first quarter - 22:9, but they were not allowed to build on the success of Khimki, who acted carefully and tactically competently. It came to a tense ending, in which Spartak lost its chances after its leaders, point guard Andrew Wisniewski and the most productive player of the match, Alexei Zozulin, who scored 22 points, sat on the bench with five fouls in the last minutes of the meeting. The basketball players from the Moscow region easily won the match - 74:72 and the series - 3:1.

Much less intriguing was the confrontation between CSKA Moscow and UNICS Kazan. In the first two matches in Moscow, UNICS looked so helpless that it was difficult to believe that this was the only Russian team that managed to beat CSKA this season. And not in an ordinary match, but in the semi-finals of the Russian Cup in February.

Yesterday this series moved to the UNICS site in Kazan, where the hosts tried to give the favorite a fight. The army team really had a harder time yesterday than in the Moscow matches. The fact that at the end of the first half of the meeting CSKA had a simply disgusting percentage of hits - 37%, was due in no small part to the defense of the Kazan club. The Kazan team went into the big break as leaders, although the gap was very tiny - 34:32.

In the third quarter, the army team upped the tempo, but failed to make a convincing breakthrough. Only thanks to the activity of Viktor Khryapa, who scored two three-pointers in a row and grabbed one rebound after another (in total, he had 11 of them for the game), the army team took the lead before the final quarter - 59:55. Unfortunately for Kazan fans, the UNICS basketball players did not have enough to finish. The army team had Ramunas Siskauskas scattered, and they, having worked well in defense, put the squeeze on the hosts.

The first matches of the final series up to three victories will be held on May 20 and 21 at the CSKA site.

Anna Kommersant-Nefedova

“Khimki” will try the Euroleague