Zenit beat Tambov in the first game of the Russian Cup

The blue-whites, like other United League teams, started their performance in the Winline Russia Cup from the 1/8 finals stage. It consists of two meetings — at home and away or, as in the case of Zenit, away and at home. Our team's opponents was the Russian Superleague member Tambov BC.

Our team went to the first match-up with a squad of 12 players. According to the regulations, there could have been two foreign players in it, but Zenit decided to use only Trent Frazier. Among other pleasant news, we note that the previously injured Sergey Karasev and Sergey Toropov also went to Tambov.

It was a necessary reinforcement, because even despite the difference in class, Tambov looks good this season. Zenit-2 has already experienced this, which lost 19 points to this opponent at home. By the way, reserve players Konstantin Shevchuk, Egor Ryzhov and Pavel Zemskiy also went to Tambov for the first game.

Zenit won the first quarter with a score of 27:8 and only consolidated the advantage in the second ten minutes. Tambov continued to leave free zones on the arc, which was converted into open three-pointers for the blue-whites. This was readily used by Frazier, Zubkov and Volkhin. By the big break, the gap had become 29 points.

After the break, little changed: our team still dominated both halves, which resulted in a very weak performance of Tambov (the opponents did not even score 50 points) and the 91:49 defeat.

Next game of the round will be played on January 8, 2024 in St. Petersburg at Zenit Basketball Academy.

Trent Fraser had 20 points by the end of the match. Denis Zakharov added 13 more, and Sergey Karasev finished the match with 12 points.