Returning from Kazakhstan with victory
Zenit played one of the longest outings of this season against the VTB United League outsider. The meeting with Astana began in confusion, but later the blue-whites asserted their advantage and won a landslide victory.
Today, Trent Frazier, Georgy Zhbanov, Dwayne Bacon, Vince Hunter and Andrey Vorontsevich were chosen by the coaching staff to execute the starting game plan. After several unsuccessful attacks from both sides, Zhbanov scored the first points of the match, easily putting the ball in from under the basket after a pass from Hunter. At the beginning of the game, Georgy was the most noticeable Zenit player on the court. He made 2 out of 4 shots from the field, was the first to grab rebounds and drew fouls. Despite the score being tied, and occasionally even with Astana leading, the guests completely controlled the game. Attack after attack, and soon the St. Petersburg team pulled ahead, thanks to Frazier and Vorontsevich, who both made three-pointers. Igor Volkhin and Alex Poythress came off the bench and made an impact, with Poythress taking just a few minutes to slam down his signature dunk. During this time, all of Astana's offensive plays were centered around Markell Johnson, who consistently scored points. At the end of the quarter, Xaxier Moon and Alexander Shcherbenev appeared on the court — the American skillfully blocked Smith's shot, while Sasha tested his luck with a three-pointer and succeeded. The first quarter is behind us — Zenit leads 14:25.
In the second ten minutes, the captain of the Zenit team immediately appeared on the court and attempted a three-pointer, but missed. The blue-whites performed excellently in the paint: Moon's and Poythress's drives increased the point gap. Meanwhile, it cannot be said that Xavi Pascual's players cranked up the tempo to the max; the difference in class was evident. Today’s birthday guy, Sergey Karasev, scored his first points of the match from mid-range after a pass from Moon. The impressive "+20" lead was achieved thanks to free throws from Vorontsevich, who also displayed impressive shooting stats from distance — the forward shot from beyond the arc 7 times, but only 2 of those attempts were successful. In the second half, Andrey would improve this statistic and become one of the heroes of the match. Frazier, on the other hand, had a better three-point shooting percentage at 3/5. The teams went to halftime with a score of 30:49.
In the next half, we continued to watch the performances of Trent and Andrey. Frazier, on one attack, faked out the home team’s forward Ruslan Aitkali and scored 2+1. Vorontsevich, in turn, added his third successful three-pointer to his tally. The blue-whites' handicap smoothly moved toward 30 points, which was reached thanks to a dunk on a fast break and a three-pointer from Zhbanov. The scoring prowess of the duo Frazier-Vorontsevich, who were competing for the title of the most productive player, was only growing. The final stretch of the match was ahead — 39:78.
In the final quarter, Egor Ryzhov was precise on a drive and later made a block shot on Johnson. In the last period Astana played open basketball without regard for the score and had the most productive stretch of the match, scoring 25 points and winning the quarter. The blue-whites, however, finished the game without taking risks: Karasev and Moon shot from mid-range, while Vorontsevich and Volkhin shot from distance. The final score was 64:99.
The best players for Zenit today were Andrey Vorontsevich (18 points + 9 rebounds + 1 assist), Trent Frazier (16 points + 3 assists + 1 rebound + 1 steal), and Xavier Moon (16 points + 5 assists + 2 rebounds + 2 steals + 1 block shot).
The next game for Xavi Pascual's team will be on October 30 in St. Petersburg. The blue-whites will face Samara. The match starts at 20:00 St. Petersburg time. Tickets are available at tickets.bc-zenit.com.
