The Saratov basketball club dates back to 1960. The team was created under the Saratov regional automotive road department, but for a long time it was called Spartak. And only in the late 80s did it first become Avtomobilist, then Avtodorozhnik, and since 1996 it has acquired its current name.
The 90s are the best period in the history of Avtodor so far: the team won silver in the Russian championship four times and bronze twice. The Pashutin brothers played here, and the legendary duo Monya/Khryapa began their careers in Saratov.
Before the start of the 2004/05 season, Vladimir Rodionov, who had been the head coach of Avtodor since 1982 and became its president in 1990, decided to move the club to St. Petersburg due to a conflict with the Samara Region government. The team played two seasons under the name Dynamo, after which the project was closed.
At the same time, the team under the name Avtodor continued to play ‒ in the Superliga B. But gradually Rodionov’s friction with the regional authorities subsided, he returned to Saratov, got down to business, successively won several divisions, and in 2014 Avtodor’s application for entry was approved by the VTB United League. The team’s first head coach in this tournament was Vladimir Antsiferov, who now works as an assistant to Miloš Pavičević at SShOR-Loko.
In the VTB United League, the Saratov club’s highest achievement is 5th place in the 2018/19 regular season.
Lokomotiv Kuban has met Avtodor 21 times in this tournament and suffered only 4 defeats. The last one was 4 years and 2 days ago, on November 15, 2020. Then, Saratov won at home in overtime with a score of 89:85. And the last time our opponent visited Krasnodar was almost a year ago, on November 19, 2023. Lokomotiv won quite confidently then, 85:63. Since then, Vladimir Rodionov, a man (may he rest in peace) without whom it seemed impossible to imagine Avtodor, has passed away…
Fortunately, Avtodor is alive and continues to be just as tenacious and unyielding. At the moment, Saratov has won 6 games out of 14 and shares 6-8 place with Uralmash and PARMA.
Avtodor’s point guard Caleb Agada leads the league in assists (7.7 per game) and steals (2.8). Over the past two weeks, the league included him in the symbolic team twice, and on October 30, in the game with Astana, Agada became the 10th player in the history of the tournament to make a triple-double.
Another Avtodor’s point guard is no less dangerous – we are talking about Bryant Crawford. He is the second scorer in the league (16.9) with only Markell Johnson (25.1) above. And after Johnson have left Astana, Crawford can rightfully be considered the leading sniper of the VTB United League at the moment.
Turkish center Kerem Kanter fits in perfectly with the Saratov team. The brother of the NBA’s whistleblower #1 Enes Kanter, in 6 games in the VTB United League, has managed to establish himself as a player who is not afraid of tough contact and almost never misses – against PARMA, where the Perm team managed to exclude Agada from the game (0 points and 9 turnovers for 8 assists), Kerem scored 6/6 field shots and 5/5 free throws, showing an efficiency of 29 points.
Another star of the game in Perm was Avtodor forward Jamal Jones ‒ 26 points. However, the Lokomotiv players know about his qualities firsthand: in October, he scored 22 points into our basket, as a result of which the game, which seemed to be under the control of the red-greens, slipped into a tense ending and ended with a victory of only 3 points.
The Russian support of the Saratov legionnaires is quite decent. Vitalijus Pranauskis is considered one of the main young stars of the league. Aleksandr Petenev has earned the right to be called the team captain despite the fact that he will only turn 24 in a week. And we are especially happy for our Egor Sychkov, who is on loan at Avtodor, consistently gets big minutes and is making noticeable progress.
This game will be the last one before the break for the FIBA window: European national teams will play their next qualifyers for Eurobasket 2025, and the Russian team will go to a training camp in Novogorsk, which will end with friendly games against Tunisia and Libya.
Loko’s next home game after Avtodor will be as far as on December 18. So, we strongly recommend you not to miss the final chance to see big basketball in Krasnodar this autumn.
Live broadcasts of the game can be watched on the Krasnodar and Match! Igra TV channels, as well as on the websites of the VTB United League and ours.