Preview UNICS Kazan-Cedevita Zagreb

The first semifinal will be played at 18:00 CET and will be between Cedevita Zagreb and UNICS Kazan. The two teams arrived to this semifinal in a very different way: Kazan in summer built his team to win the Euroleague preliminary rounds and to play in the Euroleague but they lost against Charleroi and they were forced to play the Eurocup, where they arrived with high expectations and hopes to win the competition. They won the first round robin with 5 wins and 1 loss, then they won also their Last16 group and they defeated Caserta in a tough quarter final, where Caserta almost made a stunning comeback in the second half of the 2nd leg in Kazan.

Cedevita (at their first participation in Eurocup) started from the Eurocup Preliminary Round where they defeated Dynamo Moscow, then arrived second in both round robins and shocked Estudiantes Madrid in the quarter final, to qualify for the Final Four in a Cinderella-like run.

UNICS and Cedevita already met in 2010-2011 Eurocup; they played in Group I of Last16 and both games finished with a win for the visiting team; on 25th January Kazan won in Zagreb for 76-94, while Cedevita won in Kazan on 1st March for 84-88, but Kazan was already sure of the 1st place in that group.

UNICS Kazan is a powerhouse that has a really deep roster with some very talented players; the stars are Terrell Lyday, a quick sharpshooting guard and the Polish bigman Maciej Lampe, a 7-foot very skilled player, really difficult to stop. Both players are in the Eurocup First Team. The legitimate leader of the team is Kelly McCarty, a very experienced player, small forward that can play very well driving from the perimeter or in post-up situations. The starting point guard is the Croatian Marko Popovic, while the other big man of the starting five is the Bielorussian Vladimir Veremeenko, a very athletic bigman that brings on the floor a lot of energy. From the bench the most important players are the point guard Petr Samoylenko, a defensive specialist, the experienced Zakhar Pashutin (winner of two Euroleagues with CSKA Moscow, and brother of the head coach Evgeny Pashutin), the USA swingman Ricky Minard and the Bosnian bigman Hasan Rizvic, while the 2.29 Slavko Vranes doesn't have too much playing time.

Cedevita Zagreb relies on his American backcourt formed by the point guard Dontaye Draper and the shooting guard Bracey Wright, while the other American on roster is the bigman Corsley Edwards. The rest of the team, besides of the Bosnian Vedran Princ, is all Croatian, and the most important players are the shooter Marino Bazdaric and the forwards Damjan Rudez and Vedran Vukusic. A mid-season sign is Andrija Zizic, an experienced bigman who played on his career with Barcelona, Olympiacos and Panathinaikos. We have to mention also the experienced swingman Robert Troha.

The head coach is the 2010-2011 Eurocup Coach of the Year Aleksandar Petrovic, older brother of the legendary Drazen Petrovic and former coach of another team of the Final Four, Sevilla (coached in 1996-1997).

Kazan is probably the strongest team of the Final Four and can be declared the best team of this match-up, but Cedevita in this competition already proved to be a legitimate contender, to do some unexpected wins and can have a better fan support because of the proximity of Zagreb to Treviso. So it will be a very interesting match, even if we still consider that Kazan has an advantage.