Volga region University hosted the first round of the Russian Railways Student Basketball League. The men's team's opponents on the home floor were St. Petersburg's Voenmech, Nizhny Novgorod's NNGU and Donetsk's DNR-DONNUET.
The university team, led by Alexander Shagan, started to show a confident game from the first match against Nizhny Novgorod. Earlier Povolzhskiy basketball players lost to Nizhny Novgorod 77:86. The current result shows that the team has done the work on mistakes and managed to confidently defeat the opponent with the score 82:54.
The most tense match took place against the team from St. Petersburg. The winner could not be found even after the final whistle, the score of the main time was 65:65. A confident two points at the start of overtime from Ramil Gimaev and six points from German Magzhanov guaranteed a 78:73 win for the Volga Region.
‘We were able to fulfil most of our goals, but there were still some that need work. I'm glad that the guys fought in every game regardless of the score,’ said Povolzhskiy forward Sergey Tomashevsky, who played 39 minutes on the court and scored a double-double. - I had to show character, my sprained muscle was hurting, but I knew the game wasn't over and I kept going until the winning siren.
The last match of the first round the Volga Region University team was no less successful - 99:64 in the match against ‘DNR-DONNUET’
"The task that the team faced, despite all the difficulties, was fully accomplished - we took all three matches out of three. The first match with NNGU was very important, since two weeks before that we lost to them in a friendly game. Therefore, it was necessary not only to pay our debt to Novgorod, but also to prepare as much as possible for the game with the winner of the 2023 ASB championship and the finalist of 2024 - St. Petersburg's Voenmekh," Alexander Shagan summed up the results of the tour.
