After a significant pause, the VTB United League decided to continue the championship. However, almost all the teams approached the upcoming games with a heavily changed rosters due to the departure of a large group of legionnaires, mostly Americans, to their homeland. Significantly weakened playing squads as UNICS and Tsmoki-Minsk, have met today in Kazan. The teams head coaches \velimir Perasovic and Rostislav Vergun had to invite a number of young basketball players from farm-clubs. Despite this, the level of basketball demonstrated by the opponents almost did not suffer, there was more than enough fire, fervour and thirst for struggle. It’s a pity, but these qualities were not enough for the Minsk team to successfully resist the leader of the VTB United League – 56:98 (16:34, 18:25, 8:14, 14:25).
Starting fives
Tsmoki-Minsk: Uladzislau Blizniuk, Andrei Stabrouski, Aliaksei Trastsinetski, Yauheni Beliankou, Darol Hernandez Zinenko
UNICS: Viacheslav Zaitcev, Artem Komolov, Mario Hezonja, Andrey Vorontsevich, Tonye Jekiri
Game scenario
UNICS, which still has three foreign players, two of them, Mario Hezonja and Tonye Jekiri, has been named in the staring five. And those from the first seconds proved that they intend to fight desperately for victory. A rare case, but already at the 59th second of the game, Rostislav Vergun requested a time-out. This testified that, firstly, he was not satisfied with the way the wards started the game, especially in defense, and secondly, it convinced that the coach sees ways to improve the team´s game.
The Greens acted in a signature style – extremely tough, on the verge of a foul, which makes them extremely susceptible to the attacking potential of the Dragons. Mario Hezonja and Andrei Vorontsevich confidently became the best scorers from mid-long distances of the championship: in the first quarter, they scored 25 out of 34 team points. It was hard for Tsmoki to adapt to such a game. Still, 16 points scored in the first 10 minutes was a good start.
Things went even better at the beginning of the next 2nd quarter: Yauheni Beliankou, Andrei Stabrouski and Vadzim Stubeda organized a 9:2 run, which forced Velimir Perasovic to slow down the emotional outburst of the guest team with a minute break. Rapid “debrifing” has yield results – UNICS played in the strongest combination and at the limit, which allowed far off – 54:29. In order to maintain the pace and high intensity proposed by the hosts, Rostislav Vergun boldly threw the youth into the battle. Unfortunately, the lack of experience objectively did not allow the guys to cope with the neutralization of All-Star MVP Mario Hezonja, who decided, apparently, to aim for a league scoring record. It was also hard to stop Andrey Vorontsevich, who was also on fire - he made 5 out of 9 shots from the arc. However, there were guys in Tsmoki-Minsk squad who were not embarrassed by the large-scale onslaught of Kazan. First of all, this is Daniil Barysevich, who brought the team a dozen points by converting two “threes”, Yauheni Beliankou and Andrei Stabrouski, who persistently looked for ways to the ring in the aisles and when shooting from range.
Despite the fact that the course of the game was unfortunate for our guys, they did not give up, tried as best they could to close the gap, to make it as difficult as possible for the opponent to carry out a positional attack. In particular, in the third ten minutes allowed the greens to score only 14 points. And this despite the fact that this evening, Kazan, what we call, everything was hit. It was felt that UNICS basketball players caught courage, and in such a state the team is capable of much. Out of place, UNICS burst of anger fell to the dragons...
Prominent Roles
A major victory for UNICS was made possible mainly due to the excellent play of Kazan's leaders Mario Hezonja and Andrey Vorontsevich. The Croatian scored a genius triple-double - 25 points, 12 rebounds, 12 assists, an index of efficiency - 42. And the Russian set a personal record in the VTB United League for all the years of his performances: he scored 20 points and made 6 three-point shots.
Scoring Leaders
Tsmoki-Minsk: Daniil Barysevichv - 12pts. + 2reb. + 1ast., Yauheni Beliankou - 11pts. + 6reb., Vladzislau Blizhiuk – 9pts. +2reb. + 5ast.
UNICS: Mario Hezonja – 25pts. + 12reb. + 12ast. + 1blk, Andrey Vorontsevich – 20pts.+ 6reb. + 1blk., Artem Komolov – 12pts. + 4ast., Tonye Jekiri – 11pts. + 6reb. + 4ast., Artem Klimenko – 10pts. + 6reb. + 1blk.
Rostislav Vergun - Tsmoki-Minsk Head Coach:
I have long dreamed that only Belarusians will play in our team. And finally, the dream came true. Under other circumstances, he would probably have been very happy. But, unfortunately, we were forced to find ourselves with such a line-up. I would like to believe that this is not the best basketball that we are able to show. Because a lot of work has been done in recent years and this game is not what we were aiming for. I believe that in the next games we will go out not just to play, but to achieve a positive result. The opponent has surpassed us in all components. Specific players showed themselves as leaders, although for them it was the first match in the new line-up. And this is probably a good indicator of the level of skill, when you can quickly rebuild and continue to show good quality basketball. We were absolutely helpless against the opponent's aggressive defense. There are too many turnovers, unprepared attacks, so everything is objective.
Next game
The next match Tsmoki-Minsk will play at the home court of "Falcon Club": on March 13, our team meets with the Kazakh "Astana", the game starts at 15.00.