Coach of Ukrainian 3x3 basketball players: Brodsky wants results, and that means reaching the Olympic qualifying tournament

In early April, the FBU Executive Committee approved Yuriy Protsyuk as head coach of the women's national team and the U-23 national 3x3 basketball team.

Protsyuk was the coach of the women's 3x3 team from 2014 to 2017, during which time he won silver and bronze at the World Championships and silver at the 2015 European Games. He then worked with the Ukrainian 3x3 student basketball team, winning the European Championships in 2017 and 2019, and finishing second at the World Championships in 2018.

This season, Yuriy Protsyuk won the Women's League championship with Frankivsk-Prykarpattya, which will become the base club for the 3x3 teams, and immediately after the season ended, he began preparations for the summer 3x3 season, setting himself the ambitious goal of returning the women's national team to the elite of world basketball. The Olympic Games to be held in Paris in 2024.

Yuriy Protsyuk told the FBU press service about the national team's preparations for the upcoming competitions, including qualification for the World Championships and the European Games.

About the team's training camp

In general, the Basketball Federation of Ukraine has quite global goals and objectives for the development of 3x3 basketball. Mykhailo Brodsky, the President of the FBU, wants results, and that is to reach the Olympic qualifying tournament. To do this, you need to successfully overcome the European Championship qualification sieve and perform well at the European Championship. To do this, we managed to attract the best possible squad and got good conditions and the opportunity to play in strong international tournaments.

We started training on April 10. At the first training camp, more youth players were involved, as some of the main team players were still playing championships abroad. After the training camp in Ivano-Frankivsk, we travelled to Sweden for a tournament with Daryna Dubniuk, Veronika Kosmach, Angelika Lyashko and Oksana Mollova and won the competition.

The second training camp started on April 24 and ended on May 4. We trained 3 times a day, it was hard, but we did everything to be well prepared for the competition. Now we are going to the tournament in Augsburg, Germany.

On May 7, we start our main training camp in Ivano-Frankivsk to prepare for the European Championship qualifiers and the European Games. This training camp will last until May 18, after which we will play at the World Series in Azerbaijan.

Next, we have a training camp in France, which will end with participation in the Big Twelve representative tournament on May 26-28, after which we plan to fly to Romania, where we will have the final training camp before qualifying for the European Championships, which will take place on June 10-11.

After that, we plan to hold another training camp from June 12 to 18 in Bukovel, and then compete at the European Games in Poland.

About the team composition

The doors to the adult and youth national teams are open to everyone. We have extended invitations to all the top Ukrainian players, and we have a lot of competitions planned, so we are working with an expanded squad.

The team consists of five players from Frankivsk-Prykarpattia - Khrystyna Filevych, Oksana Molova, Angelika Liashko, Veronika Kosmach and Olga Alekseichyk. We have also been joined by Tetiana Yurkevychus and Miriam Uro-Nile, who played in Poland and Belgium respectively.

We are now involving the U-23, U-21 and U-18 national teams in training to build a single training system for all national teams. Yulia Gutevych, Daria Dubnyuk, Bohdan Lapkhan, who we recruit from the youth national teams, are involved in the training. We also involve Irina Bugaeva and Anastasia Shepelyuk.

We are expecting Veronika Lyubynets and Anna Rulova to arrive, and we have invited Yulia Musienko and Viktoriia Balaban, who are waiting for the training camp in France. Viktoriia is an experienced fighter whom I am counting on.

No one has guaranteed a place in the squad yet - I will take the one who is better prepared and more charged for a particular tournament. The desire and condition of the players will be decisive, not their past achievements.

About the preparation

We are now working to build a system of play for the national team. We may lose, but I want the team to play combinationally, to make it interesting to watch. I want the players to know what we are playing on the court, so that every attack is well thought out. I want us to have a set-up for each opponent.

We have 20 transitions, our own system of checks for each period of the game. We will hone this tactic. I want to achieve discipline on the court so that we know how we play in the first period.

It's hard to implement such tactics quickly, it takes time, but I'm pleased with the way the girls are working in training. We have no stars, we will build the game as a team. I hope that the experience of some players and the youth and passion of others will move the team forward. We are working, preparing and will do everything to perform successfully.

On plans for the summer season

Our main task is to raise the rating of the Ukrainian national team to qualify for the Olympic qualifying tournaments. We dropped down in the rankings, which meant that we lost the opportunity to play at the World Senior Championships and the U-23 national teams, so we will work to improve the situation.

The ranking is based on the points of the top 25 players in the country, so we plan to participate in a large number of tournaments in France, Spain, the Czech Republic, we have applied for the World Series, and we will play in the League of Nations.

The World Series allows you to score a large number of points in the personal ranking at the level of participation in the World Championships, and given that our competitors will play at the World Championships, we are already inferior to them from the start.

An important point is the participation of the maximum number of players in domestic competitions, the league and the Ukrainian Cup, which will allow us to raise the rating of the players in the near reserve. We are doing all this to ensure that our Ukraine gains a rating that will enable us to rise to the top 10 countries in the world, which will allow us to play in two Olympic qualifying tournaments. At the beginning, the situation was critical, but we have already done a lot of work, we have gained 12 positions and we aim to return Ukraine to the top of the world's best teams, as we were when we were fighting for World Cup medals.

There is no division into subgroups yet, but we know that in Romania, we will play World Cup participants Spain, Romania and Italy, plus last year's European Championship participants Switzerland and Estonia. By the way, the Swiss will play in the World Cup qualifiers, so they are still in contention for the World Cup.

We are already starting to teach our competitors. Volodymyr Zhurzhiy, the coach of the men's 3x3 youth teams, will be responsible for scouting our opponents. We have a well-selected coaching staff. We will analyse each opponent to the molecules, but it is not yet known in which line-ups the national teams will play.

Now the games are just beginning - the World Cup will be held in May, the first rounds of the World Series will be played, where our rivals will play, and then we will begin to study them more seriously. We will do our best to qualify for the European Championships.