Basketball fight: Arizona WILDcat strikes in Russia

Ilya Kalyagin, our source from Russia, lives in Rostov. On Tuesday, Spartak St. Petersburg played Lokomotiv Rostov in the Russia Cup quarterfinal. Just to let you know who players are on these teams:

Spartak St. Petersburg:

• head coach Yevgeny Pashutin, former assistant coach of Ettore Messina at CSKA Moscow
• Zakhar Pashutin, Yevgeny’s brother and former CSKA player for Ettore Messina
• Joseph Blair - US player who played for Armani Jeans Milano and attended University of Arizona

Lokomotiv Rostov

• D.J. Collins, who will always be remembered as the “chicken and porn guy” with the funniest interviews
• Fred House, US guard, who won the ULEB Cup with Lietuvos Rytas in 2005

Seems to be a pretty good matchup, right?

Well, the game was anything but good. It seems as if the Arizona Wildcats players in Europe have one serious issue: punching other players on the court in the face. About two weeks ago, it was Loren Woods who swung his fist, now - Joseph Blair - and let me tell you I would not want to be the one receiving a straight fist from a guy like this. The guy who got hit now looks like this.

Sixteen — 16! — players were removed from the court and play resumed. First it was a 4-on-4, before ultimately becoming a 3-on-3 match.

Here is video footage of the fistfight. It looks like the two Russian players were arguing when the guy in white was pushed. It seems like he wanted to get back at the assailant, but, well, Blair delivered first.

Ilya also has footage from the 4on4 4on4 as well as the 3on3. 3on3 It turns out that Blair and the Russian guard Visnevski will be disqualified for at least 5 games.

What’s going on in Kaunas?

Zalgiris Kaunas is THE team of Lithuania. Tradition and success are the two words that you connect with the Green team from the Kauno sporto hale. But this season started pretty badly for head coach Rimantas Grigas’ guys: A big 88-70 Baltic League loss in Riga was probably the most obvious sign that something is wrong with this team.

After being defeated by Valmiera on the weekend, this second consecutive defeat against a team that should not be considered a tough opponent for a Euroleague team is raising some question marks. Willie Deane did not play against ASK Riga despite suiting up and with Mantas Kalnietis injured, the 1989-born Zygimantas Janavicius had to play 34 minutes. Loren Woods was on the court for just four miserable minutes which ended with his ejection after these actions. Additionally, Paulius Jankunas got injured, but all of this could not be used as an excuse for the defeats. And coach Grigas is pointing out some of the troubles that Zalgiris is currently facing:

We’re preparing for Euroleague, but the problems are caused by lack of players and other issues. There was a possibility that we wouldn’t go to game. So it’s more our loss than Riga’s win today, because we hadn’t enough resources to fight for a win. About money - there have been promises to fix this situation for two months already and I hope that they will be realized.

Clearly, Zalgiris lacks money. They were not even sure about going to Valmiera, nor to Riga in order to play their games. Rumors say that these words are only to put pressure on the local government in order to receive some funding to overcome a shortcoming, but several times already has the traditional Lithuanian club faced this kind of problem. The situation seems so dramatic that administrators of  Lithuanian Wikipedia have even blocked the possibility of editing the team’s Lithuanian Wikipage to avoid spam and false rumors.

We’ll keep an eye on the next steps in this story…