The Club Scene: Ural Great
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 One of the original ULEB Cup teams has its eyes on a return to the competition. Ural Great Perm hosts the return leg of the Eurocup second qualifying round next week needing to beat FMP by more than 8 points to earn its spot among the 32 regular season competitors. And there’s no doubt that this club has the history and pedigree to compete with the best. Basketball is considered one of the oldest sports in the Ural region. The first games were played in the twenties and in 1928, the first international game in Russia took place in Perm as the local team beat its rivals from France. The region did not have any notable success in the years to come, with its best finish in the Soviet Union era being sixth place in 1975.
The modern Ural Great Perm club was founded in June 1995 by some of the players that represented the team in regional games: Sergey Kushchenko, Vladislav Isaev, Alexander Antonov and Vladimir Martynenko. It immediately began to make noise in its first season, winning its inaugural game on September 16, 1995 in triple-overtime. The following season, the coaching reins were handed to Vyacheslav Borodin, who would march the squad forward to the Russian Superleague for good. The club also moved into the Molot Sports Palace that year, which remains its home to date.
 The team finished 10th in 1998 and reached the Russian League playoffs in 1999 for the first time, placing fourth overall. That result would mark a big step as the club secured a berth in the next year’s Korac Cup. Meanwhile club management also kept its eyes on the future and introduced a large youth development program, which included some 6,000 participants. It hosted a youth basketball seminar, with many of the great junior trainers attending, and had a large children's basketball tournament. Additionally, Ural Great was given the honor of hosting the Russian League all-star game in 1999. By the end of the century, Ural Great had the infrastructure and a nice mix of youth and experience to compete with the big names in Russian basketball. Kushchenko, the club’s general manager, would be recognized by the Russian Basketball Federation as the man of the year in Russian basketball for his role in developing the club into one of the best in the country.
Ural Great made its first foray into Europe in the fall of 1999 with an impressive cast of players, led by the legendary Sergei Belov and Valdemaras Chomicius as the coaches and with a backcourt of scorer Sergey Chikalkin and playmaker Tomas Pacesas plus centers Igor Kurashov and Alexander Bashminov. Their Korac Cup debut was a modest success. The club won four in a row and finished the regular season with a 4-2 mark, but failed to advance to the next stage on a tiebreaker. However the strong roster also paid dividends in the Russian League. Sean Higgins and Roy Tarpley also came aboard as Ural Great marched through the playoffs until reaching the Russian League finals, only to fall to mighty CSKA Moscow.
 What seamed like a dream season would soon be wiped out by an even more fantastic one. Ural Great took part in the 2000-01 Northern European Basketball League and was selected to host that competition’s final four. With an impressive cast that now also included Sergei Panov, Mikhail Mikhailov, Rytis Vaisvila and Willie Burton, it won the NEBL crown and then took the Russian League championship, brushing CSKA aside in the semifinals. That incredible feat allowed the club to dream even bigger as it was awarded a spot in the Euroleague. Now a well-respected club and in the Euroleague, Ural Great signed even more famous players, such as national team players Vassili Karasev, Valeri Daineko and Ruslan Avleev, former Euroleague champ Anthony Bowie and scorer Panagiotis Liadellis. The results were impressive as Ural Great reached the Euroleague Top 16, placed second in the NEBL and repeated as Russian champion!
The work of Belov and Chomicius was now clear not only with the club’s results, but also in the quality of the young players clamoring to play in Perm. The likes of Ksistof Lavrinovic, Raimonds Vaikuliis and Eddie Shannon developed their games alongside veterans Chris Anstey, Martin Muursepp and Valentin Kubrakov as the team took part in the first-ever ULEB Cup in 2002-03. Ural Great advanced to the elimination rounds, but lost in the eighthfinals against Caprabo Lleida. Ural then lost its Russian League crown to CSKA.
 Since then, the club has not returned to the top European competitions nor the Russian League finals, but it has still fought for silverware while bringing in some of the best players and coaches around. In 2003-04, Ural Great reached the FIBA Europe League final four with a squad that featured Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and Zakhar Pashutin as well as Lavrinovic and Avleev. And in 2006, Former ULEB Cup-winning coach Sharon Drucker built a team with Jurica Golemac, Jasmin Hukic, Andre Hutson and Terrell Lyday that lifted the FIBA Challenge Cup. Now Ural Great comes off its best season in recent history. The likes of Brent Wright, Vanja Plisnic, Andrew Wisniewski and the veteran Bashminov took the club within one win of reaching the FIBA EuroCup final four and it returned to the Russian League semifinals, where it lost against Khimki. Ural Great will carry that proud tradition with it onto the floor this week as it seeks to take a step up and prove that it is truly a worthy competitor in the Eurocup.
All photos by: www.ural-great.ru
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Friday, November 07, 2008
Javier Gancedo, Eurocupbasketball.com
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