BC "Khimik" - BC "Prometey". January 21. 18:00. Windrose Superleague. 14th tour.Yuzhne. FGC "Olympus". Broadcast - UNIAN, fbu.ua.
On January 20, the 14th game week of the Windrose Superleague will start with matches in Kryvyi Rih and Mykolayiv, in which Kryvbas and the Mykolayiv Municipal Basketball Club will host Dnipro and Kharkiv Sokoly, respectively. The next day, our "Prometey" will play its first away match in the third round. The sole leader of the championship will meet in Yuzhne with the local "Khimik".
The opponent of our team passed the first half of the tournament quite confidently. Vitaliy Stepanovsky's team achieved 54.5 percent of victories, and 5 successful matches out of 12 were away ones. This contrasted sharply with the results of previous years, when the vast majority of victories "Khimik" won at home. But in 2022, the closest rival of "Prometey" has not won yet. First, he lost in the 1/8 finals of the Cup of Ukraine in Kharkiv to the local "Sokoly" - 64:78. However, in the second quarter of the match there was an episode when five legionnaires of "Sokoly" started playing on the court at the same time, which contradicts the limit accepted by the main basketball body of the country (FBU) - at least one Ukrainian basketball player must be in the game. The next day, the federation considered this episode and decided to credit the Falcons with a technical defeat, thus "Khimik" reached the quarterfinals.
Two other failures in January happened last week in Ternopil and Kyiv in the Windrose Superleague. "Khimik" first lost to "Ternopil" (73:89), and then - to "Kyiv-Basket" (65:82). The team from Yuzhne went on tour without two leaders, Christian Jones and Delano Spencer. The loss of bigman Jones, the team leader of the season in terms of performance (14.0 points per game) and rebounds (8.4 points), was particularly sensitive. Both victories of Khimik's rivals were deserved, as both Ternopil and Kyiv-Basket lost their lead only for short periods of the match. At the same time, Vitaliy Stepanovsky's team spent the first 20 minutes of the match in Kyiv quite well, but all hopes for a favorable result were crossed by the catastrophic third quarter (2:23).
"They played terribly in the third quarter. First of all in the attack. They didn't hit any open shots. I cannot say that Kyiv-Basket showed some super-aggressive defense. We just did everything wrong and gave the opponent a big advantage," said Khimik's coach after the match. "We lost two people, but I'm not going to make excuses. Let's move on, work."
Khimik will try to return to victorious way in tomorrow's home match against Prometey. However, the clear favorite in this match is the national champion, even more, they lead in the season series 2:0, and won both matches overwhelmingly - 92:64 in Yuzhne and 90:61 in Slobozhanske. Prior to the second match of the season in Yuzhne, Ronen Ginzburg's team has been training in a week-long cycle due to the postponement of the Champions League play-off home match against Israeli Hapoel, and this should have a positive effect on the quality of tomorrow's game.
The course of the match "Khimik" - "Prometey" can be followed by broadcast on UNIAN TV channel and the official website of the Basketball Federation of Ukraine on January 21 starting at 18:00.
