The first stage of the regular season of the VTB United League is coming to an end — Astana has only a couple of games left to play before the games within the group of six teams start.
Today, Oleg Kiselev's team will meet again with the most titled club in Russia — CSKA Moscow. This time the match will take place on the road.
This club hardly needs any introduction. The Moscow team traces its history back to 1923, when it was formed under the name OPPV (Experimental and Demonstrative Sports Ground of Vsevobuch), created based on OLLS (Society of Skiing Enthusiasts). The team got its current name in 1960. Before that, the club was called CDKA (Central House of the Red Army) and CSK MO (Central Sports Club of the Ministry of Defense).
In less than a hundred years, CSKA has become the most titled basketball club in Russia and one of the most titled clubs in Europe. The army team is the 24-time champion of the USSR, and the 27-time winner of Russia. The title of VTB United League champions was won by CSKA ten times.
In the international arena, the Moscow club won the Euroleague four times, and the same number of times, became the owner of the European Champions Cup.
CSKA is confidently leading the VTB United League regular season: at the moment, the army team has won all 20 matches in which they took part.
In the match with Astana at the Saryarka cycle track, the team of Emil Rajkovic, who previously headed the Kazakh club, won with a score of 101:64.
In terms of players, the legendary Alexey Shved (16.8 points, 7.4 assists per game) and Nikola Milutinov (15.4 points, 8.8 rebounds per game) deserve special mention.
Milutinov, by the way, leads the average number of rebounds per game in the League, but he shares this lead with another player — Michael Myers from Astana.
«CSKA has not yet suffered a single defeat this season. In this game, they will solve their local problems, but we have an exam with the championship leader.» said Oleg Kiselev, head coach of Astana, before the game.
«There was not much time to prepare for such a formidable opponent as CSKA, which has not yet known defeat this season. But we are determined to resist the opponent as much as possible and play to win!» — captain Rustam Murzagaliyev commented.
The game will occur at Basket Hall Moscow and start at 17:00 Astana time. The broadcast of the match will be available on our website.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, schedule, and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
