Zenit-2 heads to Novosibirsk

The reserve team of the blue-whites will play an away match against Novosibirsk. The 17th round of the Fonbet Super League regular season will be part of a double road trip for Oliver Popovic's squad this week. Here are the details about the upcoming game.

Now the Novosibirsk team occupies the 6th place in the standings, with 9 wins and 7 losses.

In their last two games, Andrey Yendropov's team defeated Barnaul both at home and away with scores of 68:69 and 67:47, respectively. Before facing Barnaul, however, Novosibirsk had been unable to secure a win for three consecutive games.

Among all participating teams, the Siberians lead in rebounding (41), edging Zenit-2 by just 0.4. This also applies to offensive rebounds (14.1) and the individual performance of Novosibirsk guard Jay White, who averages 6.9 defensive rebounds per game.

Additionally, Novosibirsk averages the most blocks per game in the entire Super League — 3.9. However, in terms of scoring (69.6 points per game) and assists (14 per game), the hosts have the worst stats in the league.

The upcoming game will mark the 6th meeting in the history of the two teams. The previous matchups resulted in three wins for Novosibirsk and two victories for Zenit-2.

Zenit-2 head coach Oliver Popovic shared his expectations for the away game:

We are quite exhausted with injuries and colds, the team line-up for tomorrow is extremely uncertain. All this is an integral part of the competitive season, I mean injuries and colds, and we have to cope with it. Novosibirsk — a very good, experienced team, including physically. A very difficult game awaits us.

The game will take place on January 15 at the "Sever" sports complex. The match starts at 15:30 St. Petersburg time. The meeting will be broadcast live on the Russian Basketball Federation website.