Russian basketball players are back from European Universities Basketball Championship28.07.2010

Three Russian teams cruised to the European Universities Championship: the men’s basketball team of
Leningrad University and the women’s teams of Russian State Agrarian University and Far Eastern State University.

The three Russian teams finished as group leaders with confidence. However the Vladivostok players dropped the quarter-final match losing 13 points to the future title holders, the University of Belgrade. But they won the two remaining matches and placed fifth in the Championship standings. The twofold European Universities champion, Russian State Agrarian University failed to repeat last year success – the Russian athletes fell to the cool-headed Serbian basketball players yielding them 4 points. In the bronze medal match Russian State Agrarian University tore the host team in pieces winning 17 points.

The men’s basketball team finished second in the pool play. It didn’t prevent the Saint Petersburg students from providing a praiseworthy performance. The Russians pulled off the quarter-final against the University of Bahcesehir with a 5-point lead – it was an even score before the timeout. The semi was tighter: the game with the University of Bologna went into overtime. Leningrad State University team defeated the Italian players on 1 point and registered the most resultative match of the tournament – both teams scored 185 points altogether. Unfortunately the Russians were ousted by Vytautas Magnus University that had topped the European Universities Championship two years ago.

“Our athletes has performed decently enough and won very tough matches over the strongest European student teams,” said head coach of Leningrad State University named after A.S. Pushkin Dmitry Vasilevsky.

The X European Universities Basketball Championship drew the 12 women’s and 15 men’s teams from 13 European nations.