Youth team heads to Kazan for first away games of the season

After a long home series, Roman Knyazev's team is finally setting off for their first away games against UNICS-2.

At the start of the regular season, the Kazan team has shown medium results with 3 wins and 3 losses. Having failed at home in matches with the MINSK youth team (64:70 and 64:83), UNICS-2 successfully traveled to Saratov and Samara.

The games against Avtodor-2 brought Andrey Kibenko’s squad their first solid wins of the 2024/25 campaign. In Samara, UNICS-2 split the games: after a heavy loss in the opening match (78:43), they completely controlled the game the next day and won 79:97. The hero of that match was Kazan’s point guard Magomednabi Khalilulayev, who scored 31 points, along with 7 assists, 3 rebounds, and 2 steals.

The history of face-to-face games between our teams has 44 meetings, and so far the blue-whites are confidently leading in this confrontation — 31 wins against 13 from the hosts.

Roman Knyazev, the head coach of the St. Petersburg youth team, shared his thoughts before the trip to Kazan:

This will be our first away trip. We’ll try not to focus too much on the court we're playing on and maintain the quality of our game, even though it’s, of course, more comfortable to play on our home arena. The opponents are showing good basketball, and we’ve had time to analyze their strengths. We need to stay focused throughout both games, and we’ll strive to follow through and achieve success in these upcoming matches.

The games are scheduled for November 2 and 3 in Kazan. Both matches starting at 14:00 St. Petersburg time. The game broadcasts will be available on the VTB Youth League website.