Zenit vs MBA-MAI. Preview
Opponent
Vasily Karasev’s team pleasantly surprised the basketball community in October, showing strong results in the opening rounds of the championship.
Currently, the visitors are in 3rd place in the standings, having won 6 of 9 games. Last Sunday, MBA-MAI stumbled at home against Nizhny and will come to the Northern Capital aiming to make up for that defeat.
Looking at the statistics, the Moscow team leads the VTB United League in average rebounds per game (37.8) and blocks per match (4.4).
At the same time, the most productive player of MBA-MAI is our old acquaintance Andrey Zubkov — the forward averages 15.1 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 2.0 assists per 30 minutes on the court.
Head-to-head
The last time the teams faced each other was on April 3 this year, in one of the final rounds of the 2024/25 regular season. The match took place in Moscow. Back then, Zenit and MBA-MAI delivered a true thriller with two overtimes, with the Saint Petersburg team emerging victorious — 84:88. Overall, the rivalry history includes 14 encounters: 12 wins for the Blue-White-Sky Blues and 2 for the opponent.
Direct speech
Zenit head coach Aleksander Sekulic on tomorrow’s match:
MBA is a team that showed so far that they are a team, a serious contender for the playoffs and not only this. They play good basketball, they were winning some important games, some also unfortunate losses, but at the end of the day they have a good team, a very experienced team now with the frontcourt and backcourt some of them are very experienced players for example Zubkov, Komolov, Zaitcev, Trushkin. So they have very experienced guys and know how to play. Also Voronov not to forget, he was injured but I think he played last game. So they have a very experienced team followed by some young guys who are very talented like Barashkov, like Savkov. For sure it's going to be a tough opponent to play against.
And okay, for us, we are in a very strange time because we need to bring players back from the injuries, to find the rhythm for them. It's challenging for us but more than this it's going to be important that we bring the focus, concentration, effort especially on defensive. We made a lot of mistakes in last games. Last games we let the opponent score too many easy points and this is one of the goals for this game is limit easy points for the opponent by playing good team defense.
Who. Where. When.
Opponent: MBA-MAI
Location: CSC Arena, St. Petersburg
Date: November 12, 19:30 (local time)
Broadcast: Okko Sport, VTB United League website, VK Video, Start Triumph
