In the 14th round of the FONBET Super League regular season, Zenit-2 lost to Dynamo Primorye at home. During the game, the Blues and Whites once narrowed the point difference from 17 points to only 2 points, but the visiting team gained the upper hand in the final stage and won.
Zenit-2: Daniil Ginko、Egor Evstafiev、Vladislav Samukhin、Ilyas Abdul、Ivan Prokopenko。
At the beginning of the game, the confrontation between the two sides was fierce and evenly matched. For the home team, Ginko and Abdul scored many breakthroughs; for the away team, Ershov and Crowley led the attack. As the game progressed, the initiative on the field gradually shifted to Primorye’s side. When the score reached 8:15 and Dynamo took the lead, Oliver Popovic called the first timeout of the game. After the timeout, Zenit-2 launched a 10:0 offensive to overtake the score. The visiting team was not affected. After stopping the Petersburg team’s offensive, they responded with a 12-point scoring climax. At the end of the first quarter, Dynamo led at 18:27.
After a short break, the team from Vladivostok continued to expand their offensive, and the point difference was once opened to 17 points. Subsequently, the Blues gradually regained their rhythm, shared the ball well in quick transitions, and narrowed the point difference to 5 points with the precise shooting of Abdul, Ginko and Prokopenko. The visitors tried to re-establish a double-digit lead, but the final stretch of the first half belonged to the home team — largely thanks to forward Dmitry Rodionov, who scored on a fast break and then hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer. The half-time score was 38:43.
The second half began with Oliver Popovic’s side determined to fight back. Core players such as Krivykh, Prokopenko and Ginko performed efficiently on the offensive end, helping Zenit-2 narrow the point difference to only 2 points. However, Crowley and Smith from Dynamo responded promptly. Before entering the final quarter, the score was fixed at 60:67.
In the final quarter, the blue and white team went all out to chase points and strive for victory, but the visiting team’s defensive performance was solid and Dynamo took control of the final period of the game. In the final minutes, Smith, Crowley, Ershov and Zakharov extended the lead back to more than 10 points. The final score was 77:93.
The top scorers for Zenit-2 are Daniil Ginko (22 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds, 1 steal) and Ilya Krivykh (17 points, 7 rebounds, 1 block).
Oliver Popovic’s side will face Khimki in their next away match. The match will kick off at 19:00 on January 20th.
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