By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Unics Kazan hit a new club record 15 3-pointers in Belgrade to rout Crvena Zvezda 98 – 78 and capture their fourth straight EuroLeague win. Red Star suffered its third loss in a row.
John Brown led a balanced Unics offense with 18 points on 9-12 shots while also grabbing five rebounds. Isaiah Canaan and Mario Hezonja made plenty of damage from the perimeter with five and four 3-pointers respectively for 17 points apiece.
“We had to clean up our defense [in the second half] a little bit,” Hezonja said. “We did that. It was a little bit sloppy also at the end of the third. But we picked it up. We did what we do. We executed what Coach asks from us offensively, and our defense is our DNA. As long as we keep doing that, we will be alright. Today, it was a very good win for us.”
Dmitrii Uzinskii added 11 points on 3-3 triples for Unics that led from start to finish and dominated the second half to make the game a blowout. With Canaan scoring 14 of his points after the break, the Russian side took a 21-point advantage late in the third period and then went up even by 25 points, 66 – 91 with five minutes to play.
Austin Hollins had 15 points and Nate Wolters scored 13 for Zvezda. Their team recovered from an early 12 – 26 point deficit to make it a 3-point game in the second period but Unics pulled away quickly and didn’t even allow the hosts to become threatening.
Three minutes into the second half, Red Star also saw leader Nikola Kalinic exiting the game with an injury.
“UNICS deserved to win tonight, they played a really good game,” Zvezda coach Dejan Radonjic said. “The beginning was really bad. We were soft on defense. The second quarter was a little bit better, but it was not enough to make a better result. After that, they controlled everything on the court, they played a really, really good game tonight. UNICS is in a good moment lately, and their wins prove that. They beat Milan by almost 30 points, they have a lot of reasons for optimism and can make a great result this season. We could not control their quality tonight. We have to analyze it, find the reason for our mistakes, find the reasons for our bad play. But they have played a fantastic match. Compared to some previous games, we even scored a lot of points, not something you would expect considering how things were on the floor.”
Looking at the playoffs goal
Unics Kazan aims big, especially after winning six of its last seven games in EuroLeague and coach Velimir Perasovic mentioned that this is the proper way to remain competitive.
“We are in a good moment,” Perasovic said. “We won a few in a row, everyone is full of confidence. But, like one good coach once said, it is not a matter if bad moments will come, but when they will come. They will surely come. We are playing well this time, but we are well aware that in this competition where teams are so even, where there are so many good teams, we could soon have some bad results. Our goal is to fight for the playoffs, because that is our only way to play in the EuroLeague next season. I think we were extremely good today. We were the worst team in three-point accuracy in the first seven or eight games. Zvezda plays excellent defense, and when they pushed us away, they erased our 16-point deficit very quickly. The way we played offensively, it gives me the right to say we caused Zvezda to lose, not their bad performance.”