This will be the 35th game between the teams since 2012. We’ve won 22 of these encounters so far, while Nizhny Novgorod has won 12. The last time we played was at the beginning of this season, on October 5th, in Krasnodar. Lokomotiv won 93:78, although the score was 34:34 after two quarters. That evening, 19-year-old forward Pavel Ryabkov of the Krasnodar team scored his first points in the VTB United League.
Pari NN currently sits in 9th place in the league with 4 wins in 15 games. In their previous gameday, on December 15, Sergei Kozin‘s team defeated Avtodor (83:80), ending a 4-game losing streak. However, some of those losses were in pretty equal fights – for example, Uralmash beat the Volga team on November 23 at home only by the last shot, 73:72.
Point guard Isaiah Washington can definitely be considered the leader of the current Pari NN team. He is the only player to have recorded a triple-double this VTB season (41 assists, 10 assists, and 11 assists in a 106:103 second-overtime victory over Avtodor). Washington‘s scoring is tied with Lokomotiv captain Patrick Miller (15.4 points), also, he’s 5th in the league in assists (5.9), and he’s fouled on more than any of his teammates (4.9 times per game). His stats also include 4.6 rebounds and 0.5 steals.
Kirill Popov, who was the captain of our Superliga team (then known as Lokomotiv-Kuban-OPC) 5 years ago, is having a great season in Nizhny Novgorod. In his third stint in the VTB United League, the 27-year-old forward is 2nd on the team in points (12.3) and rebounds (5.7), shooting 3-pointers at an elite 42.2% accuracy for a frontcourt player (1.8 of 4.3 attempts per game), averaging 0.6 assists and 0.5 blocks.
Another Lokomotiv Academy graduate, small forward Ilya Platonov, leads Pari NN in playing time (28.41), averaging 8.1 points and 3.4 rebounds. He also has a decent 3-point percentage: 32.3% (1.5 of 4.6 attempts).
Two guards, who had great times in Loko once, are increasingly gaining legendary status in Nizhny Novgorod basketball. One of them is Pari NN captain Yevgeny Baburin. He has played only 4 games this season, but recently returned from injury. His scoring is in double figures (11.3), his 3-point accuracy (50% – 2.8 of 5.5), his steals (1.3), and his plus/minus (–1.0) are the best on the team, and his 1.3 rebounds and 1.8 assists are also respectable.
Another near-legend for both Lokomotiv and Pari NN is point guard Dmitry Khvostov. He’s one of three players on his current team who didn’t miss a single game in the 2025/26 season (along with Popov and Norbert Lukacs), averaging over 20 minutes per game, shooting 34.6% from beyond the arc (1.2 of 3.5), which helps him collect 5.5 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 3.7 assists.
Center Ilya Karpenkov is 2nd in the league in fouls committed (3.5), but also 2nd on his team in free throw accuracy (85.2%), bettered only by Khvostov, who hasn’t missed a single free throw yet this season. As a result, Karpenkov averages 10.8 points, 5.8 rebounds (leading Pari NN in this metric), and 2.3 assists per game.
Point guard Alexander Khomenko is the fifth player on the current Nizhny Novgorod roster to score in double figures (10.6 points). He’s a threat from the perimeter (makes 37.0% of his 3-pointers – 1.2 of 3.3) and a valuable contributor on both ends of the court (2.9 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.0 steals).
A key player in the Nizhny Novgorod rotation is small forward Norbert Lukacs: in his 26.5 minutes per game, the Hungarian scores 6.7 points, makes 3.8 rebounds, 1.3 assists, leads the team in steals (1.3, along with Baburin) and blocks (0.6).
The game will begin at 4:00 PM Moscow time at the Nagorny Sports and Recreation Center in Nizhny Novgorod.
Go, Loko! We believe in the team!