For quite a long time the national basketball team of Ukraine had not received such a resounding slap in the face as it did at the end of February in the final matches of the first leg of the Group D 2001 European championship semifinal qualification tournament versus the national team of Slovenia in Dnipropetrovsk and that of Macedonia in Skopje. Before that, our basketball players had bagged three victories over the Icelanders, Portuguese, and Belgians, not exactly grandees of European basketball, frankly speaking.
“Two days before the match versus the Slovenes, we got some first-hand information about them (a cassette recording of their national team matches). As to the Macedonians, we’ve got much more information, so we’ll take them on well-armed and try to make a tough stand against them.” (from an interview with our team’s commander-in-chief, Volodymyr Ryzhov, on the eve of those encounters).
Most experts were surprised that Mr. Ryzhov did not invite Ukraine’s experienced center Oleksandr Okunsky to play for the national team. The coach thus answered in public (in newspaper interviews): “We have a play pattern of our own that Oleksandr does not fit in with it. Besides, we have a good center at our disposal, Hryhory Khyzhniak, who suits us fine.” Also surprising was Ryzhkov’s complaint that the national team’s plans were allegedly foiled by the short duration of training: the team gathered just for a few days. This was surprising because every national team coach is aware of the fact that under International Basketball Federation regulations, a club has the right to allow its players to join the national team not earlier than 72 hours before the beginning of the first national-level-team match! And one more thing: for example, out of the eight Slovenes playing against our team, only two represented Olympia, their country’s strongest club.
If what the experts saw in the flesh in the Meteor Palace of Sports and on UT-1 (which displayed the unthinkably low professional level of the producer and cameraman in showing basketball) can be seriously called a pattern of play, then neither Oleksandr Okunsky nor any other player will fit in with a pattern like this. It is hard to believe that Ryzhov appraises Oleksandr’s capabilities higher than does the Vilnius-based club Lietuvos Rytas which has concluded a $500,000 contract with the Ukrainian center.
Our team was absolutely uncontrollable, acting under the motto of risking it all and leaving everything to luck. In general, Mr. Ryzhov seems to have decided to extend his “discovery, reckless basketball” (about which I wrote in the last issue) from the tactics of his women’s Kyiv Dynamo to those of the men’s national team.
Consider one detail. The Ukrainian team mostly suffered from the “sweet pair” of centers, Jurkovic (206 cm) and Kralevic (212 cm). Here is how they performed: 50 minutes of participation in the game; 17 goal shots, with 10 scoring; 9 and 8 free throws; 13 rebounds; and 30 overall points. And here are the achievements of our pair of centers, Molchanov (208) and Khyzhniak (216), whom Ryzhov allowed to spend only 16 minutes (out of 80) in the game: 6/1 goal shots, 2/1 free throws, 4 rebounds, and only 3 points gained. No comment.
No wonder that the Slovenes walked all over us (with a 19-point gap): 76:63 (45:36). Oleksandr Lokhmanchuk became our top scorer with 17 points.
Last season Volodymyr Ryzhov said in an interview with UT-1, “If the current poor situation in our men’s basketball persists, Ukraine will slip down in Europe to the level of Macedonia and Nigeria (sic)” And I remember thinking then, “And what if fate has Ukraine play Macedonia?” So it has. And the national team has under Mr. Ryzhov has slipped indeed, losing to those same Macedonians with a knockout score 58:84(25:41). The situation in Group D on the eve of the second qualification leg is as follows: Slovenia has five wins; Macedonia, Belgium, and Ukraine have three each; Portugal one; and Iceland none. Two other results of the fifth round are Slovenia over Belgium 74:69 and Portugal beat Iceland 87:68. Each of the four semifinal groups will delegate the first two national teams to the Euro- 2001 final to be held in Turkey.
