«Astana» Presidential Basketball Club, inspired by the victory over St. Petersburg Zenit, is already in full swing preparing for the next home game of VTB United League. This Saturday on November 9, the capital basketball players will receive guests from Belarus — «Tsmoki-Minsk» on their home court.
“Tsmoki-Minsk” - is a Belarusian professional men's basketball club from the city of Minsk, founded in 2006. This season, in addition to playing in the VTB United League and the Championship of Belarus, they are participating in the European Cup.
Achievements:
The title of a head coach is still occupied by Belarusian specialist Rostislav Vergun, who took the post in January last season, and before that, he had in the coaching staff of the Minsk team since 2014. In addition, Rostislav Vergun was the head coach of the Mogilev “Borisphen” for two seasons, while in the 2013/2014 season he was a playing coach.
Perhaps the main loss in the offseason for the Belarusian team was Devon Saddler, an American who, in two seasons as part of “Tsmoki,” received citizenship of Belarus. Also, the team left the imports American Brion Rush, who once played for “Astana”, and the Greek Zisis Sarikopoulos and Montenegr Vladimir Mikhailovic. The team also left a galaxy of Belarusian players who played at the base last season: Nikita Meshcheryakov, Alexander Semenyuk, Alexander Kudryavtsev, and Dmitrшy Poleshchuk. Since last season, only 6 players have extended their contracts, and one of them is American Jamar Abrams, who, however, last season played only one game for “dragons”, and before that he managed to play in Germany, Romania, Slovenia, as well as Japan and Canada. The remaining five in the team are Belarusians: experienced Alexei Trostinetsky and Vitaly Lyutych, Yevgeny Belyankov and young Andrei Rogozenko, but Kirill Sitnik, although he signed the contract for this season, left the team after two matches.
It should be understood that there are a lot of newcomers to the team this season, and it is worth starting from mentioning the foreign players. The first in line are the Champion of Latvia and the Italian A2 series a guard Dominez Burnett and Robert Lowry, yes the same Rob Lowry, who shone in “Astana”, and after Kazakhstan played in Turkey, Poland, and Greece. Serbian guard Branko Mirkovic returned to the “dragons” after three seasons spent for the Estonian «Kalev». French center Alexander Gavrilovic spent 5 years in the USA playing for the Dayton and Tausan teams, then played in his native France for three years, and moved to the Belarusian club from the Bulgarian team. It is worth noting that the Englishman Ryan Martin, who joined the team in the offseason, did not play a single match and left the team. Belorussian Vladimir Veremeenko, will play for the first time for the Belarusian team in his professional career, before that he played for UNICS for a long time, then for Nizhny Novgorod, and his last season was held in Cyprus. Belarusians Maxim Salash and Evgeny Pustogvar returned to the Minsk squad, Maxim after the season spent in “Kalev”, and Evgeniy had been playing in the teams of Russia, Romania, and Hungary over the past 6 years. This season, the team has two more young local players, Maxim Lyutych and Andrey Stabrovsky.
History of games: there are exactly a dozen games between the Kazakh and Belarusian teams, and all of them took place in the VTB United League. Following the results of the last three games, «Astana» celebrated the victory. As for the total score, it is a draw — 6: 6.
Tournament position: the start of the season for «Tsmoki-Minsk» is extremely unsuccessful, they lost all 4 games and close the standings along with «Avtodor». “Astana” before the match has two wins and two losses and is on the 7th line, exactly in the middle of the tournament table.
Interesting Facts:
The match will take place on Saturday on November 9 in Nur-Sultan in the arena of the Republican cycle track «Saryarka», beginning at 15:00 Nur-Sultan time. Online broadcast of the match will be available on our website in the Match Center section, as well as live on QazSport TV channel. Tickets for the match are already on sale at Ticketon.kz.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, the schedule and match results are published in the Tournaments section.
«Astana» Presidential Basketball Club once again pleased their fans with a victory in an intriguing and unpredictable ending, this time in a home game against «Tsmoki-Minsk».
“Astana” were hospitable and allowed the guests to open a score in the match, but then our guys quickly and confidently took the initiative into their own hands. “Astana” had great first minutes of the game and it took them a little more than half a quarter to take their advantage for more than ten points. Nevertheless, the Belarusian “dragons” were not thrown out of their stride, they continued to compete. Although until the end of the first quarter the yellow-turquoise looked more confident, they failed to increase the gap, and after 10 minutes the scoreboard showed +11 in favor of “Astana”. In the second quarter, the difference in the score was around 10 points, and our guests, although they could not close the gap, but also did not allow our team to increase their lead. It was in this vein that the entire second quarter had passed. The last points in this quarter were scored by “Astana”, and the teams went for a long break with the score 51:38 in our favor.
The first minutes of the second half of the match brought the wards of Emil Rajkovic a good advantage and justified the title of favorites in this match. However, the Minskers proved that they arrived in Nur-Sutan only for victory and again imposed the struggle in the second half. Once again, an equal fight ensued on the court, and the difference between the teams continued to stay around 10 points in favor of “Astana”, periodically reaching 14 points, and sometimes decreasing to 7. At the end of the third quarter, just “Astana” led 7 points, and in such a game it was an extremely uncomfortable advantage and meant that the fight in the final quarter period would be very tough. And so it happened when our leaders in the fourth quarter began to show signs of fatigue, the leaders of the “dragons” were also quite tired and this was mainly a confrontation of characters. Our guests gave all the best and were able to even the score three minutes before the end of the match, and a minute later they even had a lead. The key role in the comeback of “Tsmoki” was played by the ex-player of the capital team — Robert Lowry. The ending once again became extremely tense, and the intrigue remained until the final buzzer. “Astana” was able to recoup, but our rivals still had time to attack. Once again, our team successfully defended themselves at the end of the game and pulled out a victory with a final score of 91:89 (28:17, 23:21, 23:29, 17:22).
This is the third home game for “Astana” and the third home victory in the regular season of VTB United League. And if you look closely at these games, then it is easy to draw parallels between them. All three games were held in approximately the same scenario, especially when comparing their endings. “Astana” won all three games with a minimal advantage and in all three games our opponents had the last attack and a chance to win, but in all games, our guys competently worked in defense. But the main thing that all three matches have in common is their final result. “Astana” improved its performance in the standings, but remained in 7th place, losing to “Kalev” only for additional indicators.
Most effective:
Hero: Serbian center “Astana” Dusan Ristic almost did not leave the court for the whole game. In 37 minutes he managed to excel on all fronts: 20 points, 13 rebounds, 3 block shots and 3 assists with 9 of them 13 from the game. 32 points for effectiveness is repeating the fourth result of the season.
Head coach of “Astana” Emil Rajkovic:
- A very important victory, which allowed us to move to the first half of the standings. After success in the matches with «Zenit» and «Loko», we had a little pressure and also wanted to play successfully with «Tsmoki-Minsk». We played very well in the first half, but after a long break, the opponent began to act more aggressively. In the fourth quarter, a critical moment came when we could get psychologically frustrated, but our players showed character and achieved victory.»
Head coach of «Tsmoki-Minsk»:
- Thanks to aggressive defense and team actions in the attack, we were able to return to the game, but in the end, we didn’t have enough composure. At the end, we started playing individually, which was not successful. The last three or four attacks did not prove to be what we expected from them.
Next match: The Presidential Basketball Club “Astana” on November 11 and 12 will play for the first time in history with the debutants of the National League of the Championship of Kazakhstan, the basketball club “Aktobe”. The next match of the VTB League, our guys will be playing exactly one week from now in an away game against the Saratov «Avtodor».
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, the schedule and match results are published in the Tournaments section.
