Zenit's farm team heads to Tambov

Oliver Popovic's squad, despite being knocked out of the Russian Cup, approaches the away game against Tambov with a three-game winning streak. The match against the "wolves" will mark the first away game for the blue-whites in a long time.

Zenit-2 began their preseason games against Tambov at the end of August, and a month later, the teams faced off again in the Petrenko Cup. As expected for the preseason, those games were raw and the results were far from the main focus. Now, however, we are nearing one-third of the way through the regular season, and every match is a battle for precious points.

Our opponent currently sits in second-to-last place in the standings, with just one win. In the 4th round of the Super League, Oleg Igumnov's team secured a victory against Magnitogorsk's Metallurg with a score of 76:62. For the season overall, Tambov's standout players are center Denis Vikentyev (12.8 points, 9.8 rebounds) and forward Robert Pan (11.3 points, 5.2 rebounds).

However, Tambov's performance in the Cup has been much better. The team claimed two victories over Barnaul, advancing to the 1/8 finals of the tournament.

In Super League Tambov currently leads in head-to-head matchups with 3 wins to Zenit's 1.

Head coach of Zenit-2 Oliver Popovic on the game against Tambov:

We are facing a lot of roster issues. We came to Tambov with 10 players, 9 of whom are healthy. It's going to be a very tough match, and I hope that by the game against CSKA-2, we will have a fully healthy squad.

The match is scheduled for November 10, kicking off at 16:00 St. Petersburg time. A live broadcast will be available on the Russian Basketball Federation's website.