Zenit-2 will play second quarterfinal game of the Russian Cup away
Today, January 28, Zenit’s farm team will play the second, decisive match of the 1/4 finals of the Gazprombank Russian Cup against Pari NN. The game will take place in Nizhny Novgorod at the Meshchersky sports complex and will tip off at 19:00 St. Petersburg time. Here is everything you need to know about the decisive clash of this series.
The first quarterfinal match was held on January 7 in St. Petersburg and ended in a sensational win for Zenit-2 by the narrowest of margins — 84:83. However, the Blue-White-Sky Blues’s advantage heading into the return leg could have been greater, as Oliver Popović’s players led by as many as "+17" during the game.
After facing Zenit’s farm team, Pari Nizhny Novgorod played five games in the VTB United League. Sergey Kozin’s squad lost to Uralmash, Avtodor, Enisey, and UNICS. Only one match ended in victory for the Volga side — against Zenit’s first team, which took place on January 14 in the Northern Capital. In that game, the Nizhny Novgorod team won 99:89, with the main threat coming from the Washington–Lukács duo, who combined for 48 points. However, that duo will no longer appear on the court together.
On the eve of the second quarterfinal match of the Cup, it became known that Americans Isaiah Washington and Dean Hunter, who took part in the first game against Zenit-2, have left Pari NN. As a result, the hosts are left with only one foreign player on the roster — Hungarian Norbert Lukács. Whether he will be included in today’s lineup remains unknown.
Zenit-2 captain Artem Khodorich shared his thoughts ahead of the second game against Pari NN:
Preparation for the return match went on as usual for us, except for the fact that our coach, Oliver Popović, was called up to the first team — and I congratulate him on that! I won’t say anything about expectations; our mindset is combative, all the guys are fully focused. I don’t know how decisive the home-court factor might be, but at some point their fans could push them forward, so we need to be ready for that and withstand the pressure.
The match will be streamed on the Okko Sport.
