A tense week for "Prometey”, in terms of number of games, is ending with the second confrontation in a row in two days within the Latvian-Estonian league. For the first time in their history, our team will play the official match with a representative of Estonia. The competitor of Ronen Ginzburg’s team is a club “Rakvere Tarvas”.
“Rakvere Tarvas” represents a town of Rakvere in the north of Estonia with a population of about 15000 inhabitants that was founded back in XIII century. The basketball club “Rakvere Tarvas” has been writing its history since 2006. Their most significant achievements were reached in the very beginning of the previous decade when the team came third in the Estonian Superleague KML three seasons in a row.
Within the own short history, “Rakvere Tarvas” experienced a relegation to the 1st Estonian league, became its winner in 2018/2019 season and turned back to the elite of Estonian basketball. In the 2020/2021 season, "Prometey" rival was in the 4th place of KML, but in the previous season, they fell down in standings, in the last 8th place. The team obtained only 5 victories in 33 matches.
“Rakvere Tarvas” participated in the Latvian-Estonian league three times, however, never reached the play-off stage. The team of the 46-year-old coach Vaido Rego started this year’s season with the two significant losses against the two strongest, at a moment, Estonian teams - "Kalev Cramo” (65:111) and “Rapla” (64:98).
The roster of “Rakvere Tarvas” consists of the local players and 5 legionnaires, there are two Ukrainians among them – Vitaliy Shymanskyi and Volodymyr Shevchenko. Shevchenko, whose last Ukrainian club was “Kharkivski Sokoly”, has signed a contract very recently and straightaway became one of the club’s leaders. In both LEBL matches, he scored 15 points in each and averaged 6 rebounds. The other legionnaires of the club are at the same good level: No.3, American Derrick Scott, a 25-year-old Croatian center Antun Maricevic and a 21-year-old point guard from Slovenia Jan Razdevsek. All legionnaires, except Shimanskyi, scored 10 and more points in a match against “Kalev Cramo”. Young players Arvan-Johannes Lippasaar (22 years old) and Ralf Sats (18 years old) stand out among locals.
Undoubtedly, it will be very difficult for “Rekve Tarvas” to worthy compete with “Prometey”. However, we should take into account that it will be the third game in a week for our team, so we cannot ignore the factor of fatigue. You can follow the course of events in the match “Prometey” – “Rekvere Tarvas” thanks to the video broadcast on YouTube channel “DIVISPORT BASKETBALL” starting at 18:30.
