BC Kyiv’s assistant coach, who is also the head coach of the U20 National Team talked about the preparations for the upcoming European Championship.

“We’ll have a thorough preparation for the tournament”, he said. “We’ll start our camp in Mykolaiv on June 21, after which we’ll travel to the Moscow Region where we’ll face Russia’s U20 team. After that we’ll place twice against Israel and will take part in an international tournament before heading to Riga.

“We have a very tough group: Lithuania, Greece and Croatia and mental readiness will be as important as physical. We’ll need to make sure that climate is good. I will talk to every single player to find out what their state of mind is. They will need to socialize with each other a lot.

“Despite a long season the players don’t have much time to relax. In fact, they shouldn’t be able to. I know from my personal experience that one week is enough to recover from the season. And even during this short holiday they must jog and work out, otherwise it will be hard to get back in the practice flow.

“We have a bunch of talented players. BC Kyiv will most likely be represented by Denys Lukashov and Andrei Novikov. Serhiy Gladyr, Maxim Vilkhovetskiy and Olexandr Kolchenko will represent other Superleague clubs.

“I regard to the past season I must say it was very beneficial for me to work alongside Tomo Mahoric. He has a totally different game philosophy, especially defense, than the other head coaches I worked with. But I can’t tell you much about the sets – they are Tomo’s secret and now are my secrets”.