Let’s start with the news with a positive charge. Loko was officially ranked among the top six teams following the results of the first round of the regular season even before the match with Zenit. Actually, de facto Krasnodar secured this place before the New Year, after a hard home victory over PARMA-PARIS.
This is where the good news ends and the period of sad tournament mathematics begins. We will not bore you with long tournament layouts and options, but simply state the obvious conclusion after the home defeat from Paris NN: in order not to be the last violin in this sextet, the Krasnodar club will have to try very, very hard. This effort includes, almost as a prerequisite, the repatriation of points from the teams from the top three – and the match with Zenit looks like a great launching pad for finally starting to create a winning story.
So far, in nine matches with the teams in the standings above, Loko has never won and only in one has reached a full–fledged ending – just against St. Petersburg.
This game has become remarkable in many ways. The Krasnodar team spent the first half with the current champion on equal terms, after which they managed to score … only 1 point in 9 minutes and 50 seconds of the third quarter! Having missed 30 at the same time! But after that, thanks to the fantastic support of Krasnodar fans, the Loko players were able to win back 24 points behind and enter the end with an equal score.
A lot has changed since then, except for one thing – Zenit still does not look like a champion team of the sample of last season. On December 23, Javier Pascual’s wards received a “-12” from Avtodor in Saratov. So it is possible and necessary to beat the blue-white-blue – so far in theory.
Loko started this most difficult mission with as many as 13 game units. Newcomer DeVon Akun-Purcell was added to the 12 basketball players who were in the application for the match with Paris NN. The American forward works in the main group during training. And, although, for obvious reasons, he is not the first among the creation of lace attacking combinations, in the destruction – especially in terms of interceptions – on the leading roles. Well, he also does not miss the opportunity to shoot accurately and three-pointwise from the corner.
The road to St. Petersburg turned out to be difficult. Krasnodar saw off the team with almost critical “-10” by its standards, and St. Petersburg met with piercing “-14”. Let’s hope that there won’t be any such figures in tomorrow’s match report at all…
If the Lastochka car to Adler was entirely at the disposal of basketball players, then the plane to St. Petersburg was packed with skiers and just vacationers, ready to start working days after the Sochi holidays. The flight was also slightly delayed, as a result, the team got to the hotel only at the third hour of the night. But – down with the straw of potential excuses!
The match will start tomorrow, January 10, at 20:00. You can watch the broadcast on the websites lokobasket.com and VTB United League, as well as on Match TV and TV Start TV channels.