CSKA won the series against UNICS with a score of 4: 0

Moscow CSKA was the first finalist of the VTB United Championship. On Wednesday, the red and blue inflicted the fourth consecutive defeat to UNICS-76:64. Thus, the army team set a kind of record. Earlier, no league team won a series with a score of 4: 0. In the final, CSKA will meet with the winner of the Zenit pair-Lokomotiv-Kuban.

Kazan UNICS approached the fourth match of the confrontation with CSKA in an extremely unenviable position. The wards of Veliir Purasovich lost to CSKA in three games in a row in the semifinal series and thereby did not leave any ways to retreat. And if the loss in the first two, Moscow, meetings could still be explained by the factor of someone else’s site (0: 2 at the beginning of the series is not a sentence at all that in a parallel semifinal series against Zenit was proved by Lokomotiv-Kuban, equalizing after two guest defeats the score in the series), then the fiasco that UNIC suffered in the third, already home, matched for many for many The indicator is that not everything is in order with the Kazan club. After all, the Kazan led with a margin of 18 points.

Such an advantage of the top -end level team is extremely rare, but even such a “handicap” was not enough to achieve victory. Then Velimir Purasovich said that « penalties became decisive, » as well as « in each match we are faced with similar problems. »

Be that as it may, the Kazan were on the verge of the largest defeat in the history of the semifinals of the Play-OFF of the Unified VTB League.

Yes, the current format, with a series of up to four victories starting from the 1/2 finals, there is only the third season. But in any case, with a score of 0: 4, no one has lost in them yet. What is in the semifinals, what is in the final.

Obviously, not wanting to become the first semi -finalist to earned a “lamb”, UNICS tried to pick up the initiative from the very first minutes. Not without success: not even three minutes passed, and the advantage of Kazan, after the penalty, performed by Dmitry Kulagin rushed to two -digit numbers.

However, the hosts failed to achieve a really solid separation. Partly affected the nerves and, as a result, haste. She resulted, for example, into an extremely low percentage of distant shots – 1 out of 12 in the first half against 4 out of 11 at CSKA.

But still, the main problem of Kazan was not their own inaccuracy, but Tony Jackie. The central CSKA scored points with an average speed of one point per minute. Not fast, it seems, but enough to provide the army with the equalization of the game and departure on a big break with an almost equal score – 35:33 in favor of Kazan.

Well, after a pause, CSKA turned on in full force. The army team gave out an impressive breakthrough, in which they took both Jackie, and Mel Trimble, and Anton Astapkovich, and-this is perhaps the main thing-Livio Jean-Sharl. It was after a successful attack by the latter that CSKA for the first time in the match exceeded 10 points. Kazan people tried to compensate for the lag at the expense of distant attacks, but unsuccessfully – the three -pointed UNICS did not go. And a little more time passed, and Alex Avramovich brought the gaps of guests already to 16 points.

This was already a powerful application for victory, even though UNICS had a whole ten -minute in stock to straighten the situation. And after all, it cannot be said that Kazan residents were in advance. Not at all: the same Purasovich was, as always, emotional, urging the players to take up the mind. And they even reacted to his calls and organized a breakthrough – 10: 0. But in general, it was simply not their day. As a result, the efforts of not one of the tops of UNICS: Markos Knight, Jenna Reynolds, Ismael Bako really did not give anything. CSKA confidently brought the matter to the end, won 76:64 and became the first club in the history of the Unified VTB League to win a series with a score of 4: 0.

In the final, the army team will meet with the winner of the Zenit pair-Lokomotiv-Kuban. In this series, the account is equal – 2: 2. The fifth match will be held on May 16 in St. Petersburg.

Alexander Petrov