Zenit — CSKA, 02 June 2022

PRE-GAME BREAKDOWN

There was no days-off this time. The Red-Blues gathered at the Megasport on Tuesday to see their mistakes on the video and had a full-fledged practice on Wednesday before going to the last trip of this season.

PRE-GAME QUOTES

Dimitris Itoudis, CSKA head coach:

We prepare seriously as always. That’s Finals, two great teams who wanted to be there. We know the difficulties, they played better in the Game 5, we need to improve certain things on both ends, to be ready mentally and physically.

"RELATIVITY" CONNECTIONS

Zenit newcomers Egor Vyaltsev, Sergey Monya and Vitaly Fridzon spent long period of their careers in CSKA - two, three and five years, respectively.

Zenit guard Dmitry Kulagin played for CSKA in the youth categories and professionally from 2015 to 2017. He helped the team win the 2016 EuroLeague title.

Andrey Zubkov was a teammate of Nikita Kurbanov in Lokomotiv-Kuban during 2014-15 season.

Alexey Shved was a teammate of 7 Zenit's players at Khimki Moscow Region. He played with Monya (2015-21), Vyaltsev (2015-21), Fridzon (2007), Zubkov (2017-19), Sergey Karasev (2019-21), Jordan Mickey (2019-21) and Igor Volkhin (2017-20).

Jonas Jerebko will also face his ex-teammates from Khimki - Monya (2019-21), Vyaltsev (2019-21), Karasev (2019-21), Mickey (2019-21) and Volkhin (2019-20).

Maksim Karvanen played for CSKA-2 in the 2018-19 season.

PAST MATCHUPS

Wins-losses: 24-10 (5-0 in EuroLeague, 18-0 against Triumph Lyubertsy)

Games of the 2021-22 season:

12-Oct-2021. EuroLeague. Regular season. CSKA – Zenit: 77-67 (+10)
17-Jan-2022. VTB United League. Regular season. Zenit - CSKA: 81-68 (-13)
14-Mar-2022. VTB United League. Regular season. CSKA – Zenit: 79-78 (+1)
20-May-2022. VTB United League. Final. CSKA – Zenit: 83-59 (+24)
22-May-2022. VTB United League. Final. CSKA – Zenit: 82-73 (+9)
25-May-2022. VTB United League. Final. Zenit - CSKA: 93-79 (-14)
27-May-2022. VTB United League. Final. Zenit - CSKA: 110-111 2OT (+1)
30-May-2022. VTB United League. Final. CSKA – Zenit: 95-97 (-2)

SHORT 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: basket.fc-zenit.ru