I am playing Zvezda again after win vs Valencia that was hard and well earned by Zvezda’s best scorer controlling 4th quarter and coming up with some big buckets. Unfortunately for Zvezda he has Covid and hasn’t travelled to Russia with the team. It is not small task to win or cover without their best player this season but I think Zenit is overvalued here. Spread is +8 at the moment and I can see this being very hard defensive battle. Zenit has huge 3 pt weapon in Barron who played for Zvezda last year and will be motivated for sure. Zenit is not highly powered offense even though they have great record and I think this is type of team that Zvezda can play against. Without Lloyd, Zvezda will have to move the ball more, have Walden be aggressive and Dobric is back after skipping game vs Valencia and huge addition is Hall who has been injured for few games now and new addition in Quino Colom and he travelled with team. Bryant is playing much better for Zvezda and should be good matchup with Will Thomas. Zenit lost easy game in Moscow vs in form CSKA and Zvezda had weekend off because they had to get whole team tested and had their game cancelled. Zenit will play very tight defense and Zvezda will try to match that so I think 8 pts in this match can be huge to cover.
I don’t like to play underdog on the spread if I don’t think they can win game and I think this can be much closer than the odds suggest but I will take 8pts on the spread here always.
Zvezda +8 for me on 5 units and ML win for 1.5 units at 3.9 odds. Good luck with your plays
