“We have just finished out third training camp. We will get together on the 31st of July again and that’s when we’ll determine the final 12 players that will head to Italy with us. We had all our practices at the Olympic center near Kyiv, plus we traveled to Pushino, Moscow Region, where we took part in a friendly tournament with Turkey, Serbia and Russia. Despite one win and two losses I was pleased with what I saw there.

“All my players missed out on some vacation time, but they should even think about having rest at their age. They have to learn and improve every minute at this stage of their careers as they will be able to compensate for the lack of relaxation in a few years. We are currently trying to teach them some of the things we learned from foreign coaches, which is quite beneficial to them.

“We do have some time for leisure and that’s when we take the kids into the city or organize various parties. We made barbeque before the end of this camp – the players chopped wood and grilled the meat themselves, which helped them keep their thoughts away from basketball for a while.

“They haven’t been at home for a while. Even though they are willing to play non-stop, the quality of the game will get worse if they don’t relax their minds and these kinds of social activities really help. I talked to the other coaches and they try to do something similar with their players.

“Speaking of the upcoming Eurobasket I have to say that the Federation’s goal not to get relegated to Division B doesn’t suit us and we shouldn’t be setting it for the players. This is wrong as the guys are ready to show that they are not Division A’s outsiders and can upset any favorite at any given game. We have to get them the winners’ mentality.

“As for Kyiv’s player Roman Virastyuk – I can say that being his coach in the club I can’t be singling him out. He needs to work twice as hard as anybody else to show everybody he deserves the spot not just because he is a Kyiv player. This has helped him, though, and he is now capable of player “four” or
“five”. He is a fearless competitor, but still a bit inconsistent. He can have one great game and blow the next one, but there’s nothing wrong with it yet as this is just age related”.