Disposition
UNICS will play the semifinals with home court advantage. Velimir Perasović’s team won the regular season and throughout the playoffs secured the right to start the series in the Kazan Basket Hall.
As for the quarterfinal series, UNICS, like Loko, finished it with a score of 3-0. Samara BC could not oppose anything to the current champions. The scores of the games played were 83:73, 77:64 and 90:67 in favor of the Kazan team.
Loko and UNICS this season defeated each other twice. Fun fact: the home team won in all these 4 games.
Their leaders
The heart and engine of UNICS is Nenad Dimitrijević. He is 4th in the league in average points per game (18.4) and third in assists (6.9). This regular season’s MVP helped the team take first place heading into the playoffs. And he did this even in the absence of Marcos Knight, who missed part of the second stage.
Knight recovered by the quarterfinals and played his usual 30+ minutes on average in three matches played against Samara BC.
Dmitry Kulagin, who has also returned to duty, will definitely add variety to the rotation. There should be no doubt that both of them, despite recent injuries, will be ready to give their best to help UNICS.
In addition to the aforementioned Knight and Kulagin, two more players were added to the UNICS roster before playoffs – Mikhail Belenitsky and Andrey Vorontsevich. The Kazan team decided to add experience, which the most titled Russian basketball player Vorontsevich has, as well as enthusiasm and diversity in the attack in the person of another ex-player of the Nizhny Novgorod team – Belenitsky.
In general, UNICS’ attacking potential is an effective balance between the team’s front and back lines. Yes, Kazan’s big men are a tough nut to crack, on which opponents have broken their teeth more than once. It’s simply unnecessary to talk about the effectiveness of the trio of Jalen Reynolds, Louis Labeyrie and Ismael Bako.
There is no doubt that we are in for an exciting series, filled not only with team rivalry, but also with personal duels, which have not subsided since last year’s final.
Where to watch
The game will be broadcasted live on Krasnodar, Match! Igra & Start TV channels. As well as on lokobasket.com and the VTB United league official site.