Headed by Oleksandr Pashchenko, the young players of “Prometey” have been training for several months without any game practice; but recently, they have played five matches within three days in the European Youth basketball league tour. The club press service asked the coach to share his impressions of these confrontations.

-Coach, you have played first matches. How happy you are, at least, with the fact they were held?

-As I have already said, nowadays, any games are important and valuable. Whether I am satisfied? Probably so, with two ones. The other ones are for sparring – that is good that we played, but unfortunately, the rivals were simpler and weaker.  I would like someone to put us in our place a little bit. However, overall, guys and I are satisfied with the tournament, we need these matches as much as the air since we train and play only with amateurs. Even games with weak opponents were beneficial for us. We worked on some combinations. Game rhythm is very important. The guys got used to each other at the training sessions. But here, we had different opponents, including younger ones. That is different perception of players, different reactions; it affects the pace of the game, the rhythm of the game, the physical condition, as there are different movements, not those rational ones that were at trainings, but the game ones. You cannot replace game with anything else, that’s for 100%.

-Despite the fact that the opponents did not put up any decent resistance, did you noticeded anything for yourself? Maybe, some problems were revealed?

-There are some guys, I will not name them, who did not reach out our general level at the moment. At the beginning, you don’t know a person, then you work with him for a while, you start seeing his weaknesses, understand what he is or isn’t capable of.

-Has anyone’s play exceeded your expectations?

-I am the coach, who is always a little bit unsatisfied. When they start playing for some strong team, it will be the greatest gratitude. We still have to work and work again.

-Well, in your case, this kind of gratitude were more than once, even more than dozen times. Plenty of your former players are parts of strong teams and national teams.

-I will say that in general, they are not mine they are more system players. Everything is being built step by step. A player has to be raised up from the age of 12-14 years old and develop gradually. The former “Khimik” players, if you mean this, are system product. For sure, they have to be directed correctly, not to spoile them, which is important today. Nowadays, it is very easy to spoil a player, as they have everything but they sometimes forget that, first of all, there is a battle of characters on the court. Unfortunately, players often want more than they deserve, too early. We must struggle with it.

-But, in current situation, the main problem is a lack of game practice. I understand, we cannot make any predictions for future. However, you play a friendly match in Latvia…

-We play in the city of Valka, then in Estonian city of Tartu. Sure, it’s really difficult to plan something nowadays, but we want. Everything is fine for us as for athletes, but unfortunately, not everything is fine as for the country. So, the perspective of point of view is important.