The first home matches of the VTB student basketball League championship were held by the men's team of the Volga region Academy of sports on November 25-26. The students of Vyatka state University became the rivals of the "academicians".
The first match ended with the victory of the hosts (79:72). But the next day, the guests were able to take revenge (101:92) in an incredible heat of the match, in which the opponents had to play two overtimes to identify the winner. The main time of the match ended with the score 74: 74. The score on quarters testifies to equality of forces on a platform. The first two 10 minutes ended with a one-point advantage for VSU students. In the third "academicians" took the lead, but the guests managed to transfer the game to overtime. 11: 11-the result of the first 5-minute.  Alas, after a short break, the students of the Volga Academy failed to join the game (7:16). It should be noted that in this match the team was led not by the sick head coach Olesya Matvienko, but by her assistant Victoria Shagan. Field of the match, she admitted that the lack of Matvienko on the bench, of course, reflected in the boys ' actions. However, according to Shagan, the team had to beat the opponent with a big score, if throughout the match showed their best basketball…
However, Olesya Matvienko believes that the Academy team as a whole is far from its best game:
- It so happens that in a winning match the team looks much worse than the day when they were defeated.  So I'm not even happy with how the guys played the day before. We can't find our game yet. Perhaps the fact is that we are performing against the background of intensive training. Still, we have a lot of games ahead, and the main ones are coming in the final in the spring. We are going to approach them in the best shape. At the same time, I do not think that by that time we will occupy a place at the bottom of the standings. It is worth noting that we can not use in the matches of the players "UNICS" because of the layering of calendars.
While the Academy team in the standings of the VTB championship is on the 12th line. And the next matches of the tournament will be held on December 9-10 in Perm against the team "Univer".