Loko without Yelatontsev vs Samara without literally everyone

Today at 8 PM Lokomotiv Kuban will play at home against Samara, a team whose roster has undergone radical changes during the season. However, our roster now also looks completely different than it did even couple of weeks before.

As a result of the injury sustained in the game against Zenit, Lokomotiv center Kirill Yelatontsev will be out for the next few weeks.

Several players from the reserve team are training with us and will play against Samara. A chance is the thing I give everyone. Everything depends on how they use these opportunities. The closer to the playoffs, the more I will rely on the players who fulfil their chances. The most important thing in this game will be our attitude. Despite the opponent's problems with the lineup, we mustn't underestimate them. Samara, with any roster, will play against us maximally motivated.

Andrey Vedishchev, the head coach for Lokomotiv Kuban PBC

After the governor change in Samara region, Samara BC was forced to terminate contracts with all their legionnaires, many players with Russian passports also left. However, in the 3 previous games, the Volga team’s starting five was the same. Let’s talk about each player in the starting lineup of our opponent today.

Andrey Sopin is one of the those players who received significant minutes even at the beginning of the season. This point guard’s was the MVP of the All-Russian students league in 2017. He moved to Samara last summer from Runa. This season, the player averages 5.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 0.9 steals.

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Power forward Gleb Goldyrev spent most of his career in the Superliga and won the 2017 Russian Cup with Novosibirsk. He played in the MBA club for the previous two seasons. In the current championship, his statistics are 7.1 points and 2.3 rebounds.

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Small forward Ilya Platonov is a Lokomotiv Kuban alumnus. In 2018, he played 5 games in the VTB United League and 1 in the Eurocup for our team’s main roster. After that, he spent several seasons in Nizhny Novgorod and MBA. In April last year, he suffered a serious injury, from which he has just recovered – his first match afterwards was on March 2. Since then, he has become the top scorer in the current Samara roster – 9.3 points (let’s not forget his 4.0 rebounds).

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Viktor Kashin, who plays both point guard and shooting guard, won the Russian Cup with Samara in 2020, when the team was still playing in the Superliga. In 2022, he decided to switch to 3×3 basketball, but last winter, when his club began to experience problems with its roster, he returned to 5×5, and now he is the team captain. His rather modest statistics of 1.7 points and 1.5 assists do not fully reflect his contribution to the game.

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Nikita Kosyakov started the season in the VTB United Youth League, and now he is the main team’s starting center. On average, he scores 5.1 points and makes 3.4 rebounds per game.

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Another center of Samara-2, Danila Sletkov, also plays for the main team often. In the VTB United Youth League, he leads in blocks with quite an amazing result of 3.0 per game. And in the recent game against MBA-MAI, he managed to block 2 of his opponents shots, so now in the VTB United League, he has an average of 0.7.

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But Samara’s main wunderkind is small forward Yegor Amosov. For the season, his line is 4.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 0.7 steals. And in February, he was invited to the VTB United League All-Star Game, where he took part in the slam dunk competition.

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We are waiting for you at the Basket Hall! Also, you can watch the game remotely on the Krasnodar and Start TV channels, on the VTB United League website and on our main page.

Go, Loko!