Kommersant: “UMMC take it all”
The Ural basketball team won the Russian Championship this season, as well as the national Cup and Super Cup.
On Thursday, the UMMC women’s basketball club won the third game of the Premier League playoff final series, where they faced Nadezhda from Orenburg. Thus, UMMC became the champions of Russia for the 18th time. Moreover, the “Foxes” achieved a treble for the third consecutive time, having also triumphed in the Russian Cup and Super Cup.
Russia’s strongest women’s basketball club, UMMC, once again confirmed its status on Thursday. The team, led by Dmitrii Donskov (who took over the team in early 2022 after a number of foreign players left the club, and managed to quickly rebuild it and return it to championship level), won the third game of the Premier League championship series against Nadezhda from Orenburg. The Ural team ended the season emphatically, clinching the title in an away game with a commanding 88-56 victory.
This marked UMMC’s 18th triumph in the national championship. Additionally, the “Foxes” can boast another treble, repeating the feat they achieved in the previous two seasons.
In addition to winning the national championship, the team also claimed the Russian Cup (for the 12th time in their history) and triumphed in the Super Cup (their fourth win - but the tournament itself has only been held four times). In other words, UMMC had an almost perfect season. The word “almost”, admittedly more of a nitpick, refers to a single loss the team suffered that season. This January, the Yekaterinburg team unexpectedly lost to Enisey by a 28-point margin. It was their worst defeat in Russian championships in over 17 years. However, that setback ultimately strengthened the team. They didn’t falter again. Neither in the regular season, nor in the playoffs - where, in the semifinals, they took revenge on Enisey by beating them three times.
As for the final series against Nadezhda, the “Foxes” did most of the work in the first two games, which took place in Yekaterinburg. These games weren’t held in the usual venue - the Palace of Sporting Games (DIVS) - but at the newly opened UMMC Arena, which was completed and handed over for use only at the end of last year. Originally, the team’s debut at the arena was scheduled for next season, but due to changes in the event calendar, the opportunity arose to test it in basketball mode (UMMC Arena is capable of hosting competitions in 11 different sports). As noted by the president of the UMMC Basketball Club, Andrei Kozitsyn, “I’ve launched many different enterprises, and I can tell you - it’s easier to launch a factory than a stadium like this.” “Over the five years of construction, we designed one arena but ended up building an entirely different one. The result is something to be proud of,” Mr. Kozitsyn told reporters.
UMMC’s decision to test out the new arena early for basketball turned out to be a smart move. The first game against Nadezhda drew 10,345 spectators - a national record for women’s basketball.
Incidentally, that game was also the most intense of the series. Nadezhda had their chances, but the home team ultimately pulled off a 91–83 victory. In the second game, there was little real competition. The team from Orenburg couldn’t find a way to contain UMMC’s leader Maria Klyundikova, who, despite playing only 25 minutes, managed to achieve a double-double (18 points and 13 rebounds) and helped her team win 78–59. Over the two games, Klyundikova tallied 35 points, 27 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 4 assists. And although she didn’t deliver her usual level of performance in the final game of the season (which didn’t stop her from being named Playoff MVP), UMMC had no shortage of players ready to step into leadership roles - like Alexandria Bentley (15 points) and Kseniia Levchenko (10 points). In fact, after Levchenko’s shot at the end of the third quarter, the game was essentially over. UMMC had built a 26-point lead, and there was no visible way for Nadezhda to close the gap.
