VTB United league 2020/2021
UNICS
Kazan
VTB United League, Regular season
03.10.2020, 21:00 Sa
Arena: Basket Hall (Kazan)
101:83
Main time
22:19 31:23 23:23 25:18
Game number: RS-8
Spectators: 1384
Astana
Astana

«Astana» team heads to Kazan for the first away match in the new season of VTB United League

02.10.2020, 10:00    Просмотров: 692
Источник: Press service
Автор:
The first away game of the basketball club «Astana» in the new season of the VTB United League will be held in Kazan against the local UNICS. The match will take place on October 3, beginning at 21:00 Astana time.

UNICS - is a Russian professional men's basketball club from Kazan, founded in 1991. In addition to the VTB United League, this season the participate in the Eurocup.

Achievements:
  • Silver medalist of the Russian Championship — 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007• 
  • Bronze medalist of the Russian Championship — 2000, 2003, 2005, 2009-2011, 2013/2014, 2018/2019• 
  • Winner of the Russian Cup — 2003, 2009, 2014
  • FIBA Euroleague Champion — 2003/2004
  • Winner of the European Cup — 2010/2011
  • European Cup finalist — 2013/2014
  • NEBL Champion — 2002/2003
  • Silver medalist of VTB United League — 2009/2010, 2011/2012, 2015/2016
  • Bronze medalist of VTB United League — 2010/2011, 2018/2019
 
Team roster:

As for the UNICS team, it has changed significantly since last season. Perhaps the main loss for the team was the departure of one of the leaders of last season — the American Eric McCollum, who signed a contract with “Khimki”. Also, Alex Tyus, Raymar Morgan, Jordan Theodore, Haukur Palsson and Jamil Wilson have left the team. Another import Elgin Cook left the team, but he did not play a single VTB United League game last season. Among the Russian players, Valeriy Likhodei left the team and went to Poland to play for the Anville team. Andrey Koscheev also left the team and the young Kirill Anoshin was not announced.

American Jamar Smith and Greek Kostas Kaymakoglu became foreigners who stayed in Kazan. Of the Russian players with UNICS, Pavel Sergeev, Evgeny Kolesnikov, Dmitry Uzinsky and Artem Klimenko have extended their contracts.

Five American players have joined the Kazan squad this season. John Holland, a shotting guard, started his professional career in Europe, playing for the French Roanne and Graveline Dunkerque, the Spanish Cajasol and the Turkish Besiktas. Then John tried his hand at the NBA, but only played a little for the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers, and mostly played in the NBA development league in the Canton Charges and Austin Spurs. In 2019, he managed to play for Puerto Rican Santeros de Aguada and Filipino San Miguel Beermen, and he spent the entire last season in Israel's Hapoel Jerusalem. Point guard Nate Walters began his NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks before joining the New Orleans Pelicans. Then there was the NBA development league and Grand Rapids Drive and two seasons in Europe — in Turkish Besiktas” and Serbian Crvena Zvezda. Then Nate again tried his hand at the NBA in Utah Jazz” but could not gain a foothold and moved to the Salt Lake City Stars, and then the French Élan Chalon. The last two seasons he spent first at Zalgiris, and then Maccabi, Tel Aviv. Point guard Isaiah Canan has a great career in the NBA, having played in such teams as the Houston Rockets, Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers, Chicago Bulls, Phoenix Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves and Milwaukee Bucks, and also played in the NBA Development League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, Northern Arizona Suns and Stockton Kings. Isaiah also had a small trip to China in 2019 for the Shandong Golden Stars team. Powerful forward Jordan Morgan started in Italy — Virtus Roma, and then moved to France, where he played in the teams Hermine de Nantes Basket and Paris Levallois. In 2016, he returned to the States, where he joined Canton Charge, but quickly returned to Europe, playing in the Greek Kõmis and Slovenian Petrol Olympia. He spent the last two seasons in Turkey with Banvit and Pınar Karşıyakaa. Forward John Brown before UNICS has spent four seasons in Italy, in the teams Virtus Roma, Universo Treviso Basket and New Basket Brindisi. 

As for the Russian newcomers to the team, there are three of them. Powerful forward Pavel Antipov cannot be called a newcomer, because at different times he had spent 4 seasons for the Kazan team. In addition, he played for Spartak, Zenit and Lokomotiv-Kuban, and spent the last two seasons in Nizhny Novgorod. Powerful forward Alexander Razumov played for Zenit, but spent most of his career in the teams of the Russian Super League — Ryazan, Spartak-Primorye and Novosibirsk. Young shooting guard Georgy Zhbanov has spent the previous 4 seasons in Nizhny Novgorod.
 
Rival leaders:

For UNICS, this match will be the first in the VTB United League season, but before that, they had already played 4 matches, two in the preseason, with Avtodor and PARMA. And on September 30 UNICS played its first game in EuroCup, following which it lost to the Italian team Umana Reyer Venezia. Despite the defeat, the leaders of UNICS still can be distinguished for this game at the moment. 
Jamar Smith in the match with the Italian team became the most effective and efficient in the UNICS squad. Excellent results were shown by John Brown, Isaiah Kanan and John Holland. Dmitry Uzinsky became the best Russian player. It is to this player that our team should pay close attention.
 
Head coach:

he coaching staff of UNICS Kazan has not changed at all since last season and still remains Greek. Dimitris Priftis is leading the Kazan team for the fourth season in a row and is assisted by two more Greek specialists Thomas Niku and Valiles Simtsak. Head coach Priftis has more than twenty years of a coaching career, which mainly took place in his homeland in Greece. He started at the head of the women's team Kalithea, then spent 10 years as an assistant coach of the Greek men's teams Daphnis, Ionikos, AEK and Aris. After that, he headed the coaching staffs of the teams Kavala, Kalithea and Kolosos. In 2014, he briefly became an assistant coach in the Panathiacos team, but then became head of Aris, where he became the coach of the year in the Greek championship in 2016. In addition, Dimitris Priftis has been an assistant coach of the main Greek National team for a long time. At the UNICS coaching staff in 2019, he was chosen as the coach of the “World Stars” at the VTB United League All-Star Game.

Dimitris Priftis
 
Tournament position: 

For UNICS, this is the first game in the VTB United League season, and Kazan currently has no points in the standings. “Astana” with one defeat is still at the bottom of the table, but a victory in this match can significantly raise our team in the ranking.
 
Matches’ history:

For the entire time in the VTB United League, Astana and UNICS have met on the court 15 times, while the capital team managed to beat eminent rivals from Kazan only twice. 
 
Interesting facts: 
  • UNICS became the first rival of Astana in the VTB United League, the match was also held in Kazan and ended with the victory of the hosts.
  • Kazan has a street named after Nursultan Nazarbayev, and in 2018 for a home match with Astana, any Kazan resident living on this street could attend the match for free.
 
The match will take place on Saturday, October 3 in Kazan at the Basket Hall arena, starting at 21:00 Astana time. The online broadcast of the match will be available on our website in the Match Center section, as well as live on the QazSport TV channel.

Detailed information about the tournament, tournament tables, schedule, and match results are published in the Tournaments section.

«Astana's» visit to Kazan ended in defeat to UNICS

04.10.2020, 10:00    Просмотров: 536
Источник: Press service
Автор:
The game between the basketball clubs Astana and Kazan UNICS in the away match of the VTB United League was not crowned with success for Astana - the game ended with the victory of the hosts.

For their first match in the new VTB United League season, UNICS Kazan declared the most effective players. The centre, the Greek player Kostas Kaimakoglou and the Russian player Artem Klimenko were the only ones not involved in the game among the 14 players announced for the season. Astana had practically the same players in the roster as in the match against CSKA, the only exception was the replacement of Maxim Marchuk with Adonis Thomas, who recovered from an injury.

Despite the fact that the toss was won by Astana, in the first attack our team failed to open a score. Moreover, the yellow-turquoise could not score points during the first three minutes of the game. Only at the end of the third minute, Michael Thompson unsealed the hosts' ring. However, UNICS during this time was not the most productive either, Kazan team managed to score only five points. During most of the first quarter, Astana adjusted to the game of the hosts, who quite dominated, although they could not pull away in the game. Nevertheless, Emil Rajkovic had to take a time-out, because three minutes before the end of the first quarter, his players were losing almost 10 points, and this tactical pause brought noticeable benefits. Our players began to play more confidently and significantly reduced the gap, moreover, they even had the opportunity to finish the first quarter in a draw. But the three-pointer in the last minutes was blurred, and the first 10 minutes were left for UNICS (+3). By the way, it should be noted that Astana players were pretty nervous at the start of the quarter and received five team fouls in five minutes. In the second quarter, the capital team played much more confidently and clearly coped with their nervousness, but UNICS also did not slow down and used their strengths to the full. Astana did not allow rivals to increase their lead, but they could not catch up with them either. For five minutes the difference between the teams was something between 5-8 points, but then the hosts began to gradually strengthen their positions and increase the gap. Thus, the team of Dimitris Priftis managed to complete the first half of the game with an advantage of more than 10 points — 53:42. It is worth noting that the Kazan team was doing very well with three-pointers in the first half and due to them that they achieved this advantage, and in other respects, they did not surpass our team.



After a long break, Astana did not give up and fought for every point and for every centimetre of the court. The lag of the Kazakh team was gradually reduced and reached five points. The UNICS coaching staff took time-outs to slow down the pace of our team, after which the Kazan team acted more effectively and repelled the threat. Despite all the efforts of our players, by the end of the third quarter, the Kazan team was able to regain their double-digit advantage and won 11 points quite comfortably before the final quarter. The fourth quarter became extremely difficult for our team. The key players were already obviously tired, so also two essential players Jeremiah Hill and Martins Mayers could not continue the match to the end owing to fouls. Despite all the challenges, Astana was losing only 7 points in less than five minutes before the end of the game, and there was still an opportunity to snatch out a victory in this match. But today everything turned out not in our favour. UNICS played the last minutes of the match clearly better than our team and did not give any chances for Astana, which was playing out in a truncated composition. As a result, the defeat in Kazan was added to the loss from CSKA in Nur-Sultan — 101: 83 (22:19, 31:23, 23:23, 25:18).
 

Most productive:
  • UNICS — Isaiah Canaan became the most productive player of Kazan — 23 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists, and John Holland with 19 points and 7 rebounds became the most effective. Jamar Smith and John Brown also had a great game.
  • «Astana» — Despite the fact that Jeremiah Hill did not finish the match, he became the most effective in this match as part of our team, gaining 14 points, 3 rebounds, 8 assists and 3 steals. The most points for Astana were brought by Adonis Thomas — 16 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists.  Also, an excellent match was demonstrated by Michael Thompson with 15 points and 5 assists, and Martins Meyers with 14 points. Among the Kazakh players, one of the best matches of his VTB league career was played by Nikolay Bazhin, who came out in the starting five and had spent more than 34 game minutes, while gaining 14 points, 2 rebounds, 2 steals and 1 steal.

UNICS head coach - Dimitris Priftis:
First of all, I’m happy to get back to the games after months of waiting. Of course, I’m glad to win the first VTB United League game. Unfortunately, we had a unique and weird way to get prepared. We had to deal with many circumstances. Given all that, it’s great to win.

«Astana» head coach - Emil Rajkovikj: 
- I should say that Dimitris Priftis has built an excellent team this season. I am not disappointed with the result, even though we lost. We faced a lot of difficulties during the preparation for the season and started working only 4 weeks ago. Until now, we are not in our game shape yet and as though we are continuing our preparation. Also, we are still waiting for two more players whom we had signed a long time ago to join us. I hope that before the game against Khimki, our squad will be complete and we will be in better shape.

Consequences: UNICS starts the VTB United League season with a victory, but for “Astana” this is the second defeat of the season in a row out of two possible ones. But let's not forget that our team has so far played only with the teams from the objectively «top four” in the league.

Next match: On October 19, Emil Rajkovic's players will again play away game in the VTB United League, this time they will go to the Moscow region to meet with Khimki.

Detailed information about the tournament, tournament tables, schedule, and match results are published in the Tournaments section.

Information about the opponent

Established year: 1991 Team colors: white, green
Country: Russia Arena: Basket Hall
City: Kazan Website: www.unics.ru

Description

UNICS - is a Russian professional men's basketball club from the city of Kazan, founded in 1991.
 
Achievements:
  • The silver prizewinner of the championship of Russia — 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2016, 2021
  • Bronze medalist of the Russian championship — 2000, 2003, 2005, 2009-2011, 2013/2014, 2018/2019, 2021/2022
  • Winner of the Cup of Russia — 2003, 2009, 2014
  • Champion of Euroleague FIBA — 2003/2004
  • Winner of the European Cup — 2010/2011
  • Finalist of the European Cup — 2013/2014
  • Champion NEBL — 2002/2003
  • Silver medalist of the VTB United League — 2009/2010, 2011/2012, 2015/2016, 2020/2021
  • Bronze medalist of the VTB United League — 2010/2011, 2018/2019, 2021/2022

Overall team photo

UNICS