The most interesting game of the last round of Euroleague group stage will take place in Nizhny Novgorod where local team will play “Unics” Kazan and the winners will play in the next stage. Levan Patsatsia plays for “Nizhny Novgorod” and Viktor Sanikidze plays in the Kazan club.
Sanikidze talked about this game on the official website of Euroleague.
We won our last four Euroleague games and that has given us a chance to make it to the Top 16. We need to beat “Nizhny Novgorod” on the road if we want to advance - we also have a chance if we lose, but I don't really count on that. It is great that we are playing better, but none of it will matter if we do not beat Nizhny.
We won five games and are not qualified yet - our regular season group is so tough! There are teams that qualified in other groups with less wins than we have right now. Our group is really crazy, but the good thing is that everything is in our hands. If we win, we qualify and if we do not, we will most probably be eliminated.
It is a big game for both teams - two Russian teams fighting for a Top 16 spot! It will be a really tough game, especially because we play on the road. We have shown a lot of good things lately. We beat Real Madrid and that means a lot; we can beat anyone and of course, can also beat Nizhny over there. That win in Madrid changed everything for us. Every game is a must-win for us after a slow start.
We have a new coach, Evgeny Pashutin, who won a Eurocup title with Unics three years ago. I think he brings more freedom to our game. We play with more freedom and that's the key, the biggest thing he changed in our game. As a team, we realized that there was no way back and that we had to win all of our games. This helped us, I think, knowing that any loss may make us run out of chances to reach the Top 16. We stayed together and focused and prepare for each game better.”
“Nizhny Novgorod” will face “Unics” on Friday, at 21:00 Tbilisi time. Tomorrow “Laboral Kutxa” of Tornike Shengelia will play “Crvena Zvezda” in Belgrade. Today CSKA of Manuchar Markoishvili will face “Limoges” of France. The Moscow game will start at 21:00.
