Preparation or rhythm?

St. Petersburg days

By an amazing coincidence, CSKA - Zenit is perhaps the main sports headline of this days. Most recently, these teams met in the finals of the Youth League Championship. Last Thursday, Semen Antonov, Tonye Jekiri, Nikita Kurbanov, Nikita Mikhailovsky and Ivan Ukhov, together with staff representatives, supported their football teammates at the Russian Cup semi-finals. And on Saturday, when the team was already flying to St. Petersburg on a Aeroflot commercial flight (by the way, on a plane named after Alexander Gomelsky!), in Krylatskoye the red-blues fought with the blue-white-blues in the final of the VTB United Youth League.

The Moscow team has a chance to start this series at full strength. All 15 basketball players went on the road.

Time for another, better basketball

It’s pointless to remember the meetings in the regular season now (although all four turned out to be exciting). The current level of readiness of the teams is much more important. And here the eternal question arises: who has an advantage starting this playoff series - the one who was finished the previous series earlier, had time to recover and prepare, or the one who played more recently, gained experience of decisive games, and found the rhythm?

This is exactly the situation that developed in our matchup. CSKA finished the fight with Enisey a week ago, got a couple of days off, practiced for two days, rested again, found out who is the opponent - and purposefully prepared for Zenit for the last two days. The St.Petersburg team, on the contrary, fought with Uralmash in five games, ending only on Thursday, and, in fact, do not need serious training. Xavi Pascual's team in quarterfinals was led by Vince Hunter (14.0 ppg, 7.0 rpg), Trent Frazier (13.6 ppg, 4.4 apg) and Thomas Huertel (11.6 ppg, 7.0 apg).

“The semifinal is the time to enjoy basketball,” says CSKA head coach Andreas Pistiolis. “These games require a different psychological approach; they will differ from the regular season games. We are ready for the challenge. We are facing a very good team, we hope to return home with at least one win and we are setting ourselves up for success in the series. Since we didn't know who the opponents would be for most of the preparation period, I tried to make some changes that better suited my philosophy, but at the same time take into account the best qualities of the players. We tried to find our identity, take the best from what was shown in the first round and prepare for the upcoming games.”

Past matchups

Wins-losses: 33-15 (5-0 in EuroLeague, 18-0 against Triumph Lyubertsy)

Games of the 2023-24 VTB United League season:

08-Oct-2023. 1st stage. Zenit - CSKA: 76-80 (+4)
10-Dec-2023. 1st stage. CSKA - Zenit: 104-89 OT (+15)
01-Mar-2024. 2nd stage. Zenit - CSKA: 81-71 (-10)
28-Mar-2024. 2nd stage. CSKA - Zenit: 91-92 (-1)

Brief dossier

Zenit St.Petersburg, Russia

Founded: 2014
Colors: dark-blue, white, light-blue
Homecourt: SIBUR Arena (7,120)
CEO: Alexander Tserkovny
Head coach: Xavi Pascual
Website: bc-zenit.com