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Yevgen Sakhniuk brings Euro flavor to La Salle

09/18/2014, 4:00pm EDT

By Josh Verlin

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Unlike many young European ballplayers who dream of coming to the United States one day to play college basketball, Yevgen Sakhniuk wasn’t thinking that big.

“I wanted to come to America just to see the country first,” he said.

Sakhniuk–whose first name is pronounced “Hugh-gene”–got that chance this February, when while playing with Prague-based Get Better Academy, he appeared in the National Prep School Invitational in Providence, R.I.

There, the 6-foot-7 forward averaged 16 points and 11 rebounds in four games against top competition, opening the eyes of former La Salle assistant Harris Adler. Not too long after, Explorers head coach John Giannini extended the 19-year-old a scholarship to the North Philadelphia institution.

In June, the school announced his arrival as a member of its incoming 2014 class, joining Theodore Roosevelt (D.C.) point guard Johnnie Shuler as new faces on the squad.

“When I got a chance to come and play and study and get a degree and participate in NCAA [basketball], I was thinking ‘why not, it’s a great opportunity for me to be [educated] and play basketball as well,’’ Sakhniuk said after a workout on Thursday. “They offered me a scholarship and I think it’s a great coach who can make me better and a great team, and great tradition on the team.”

Sakhniuk specifically mentioned La Salle’s Sweet 16 run two years ago as another selling point on the school, and all the factors together were too much to turn down. So he took the 12-hour trip from Kiev through Paris and ended up in North Philadelphia, arriving back on August 18.

He’s the first European player at the school in Giannini’s 11 years at La Salle, though it’s not a concept the coach is unfamiliar with. While coaching at Maine from 1996-2003, Giannini said he went to Europe “four or five times” each year, and had players like Bulgaria’s Ludmil Hadjisotirov in the program.

That Sakhniuk comes from Get Better Academy is something of a blessing and a curse. Because he played an international club schedule last year, the NCAA has granted him just three years of eligibility, which means he will sit out this year and begin his college career as a sophomore next fall.

But playing that international schedule means he’s not your average freshman.

“It’s less of an adjustment because they’ve played at a higher level than high school,” Giannini said. “When you play against the best people in the world in your age group and you play for a club that may play 50-60 games a year, you’re infinitely ahead of a high school who gets to play 20-some games per year, locally.”

At Get Better Academy, Sakhniuk learned under former Butler guard Julian Betko, a Slovakia native who played for the Bulldogs from 2005-08 after a year at Clemson. Due to Betko’s experience in both the ACC and Horizon League, he knows what it takes to be successful in Division I basketball, and passed that knowledge onto his players.

So although Sakhniuk is still going to take some time to learn the Explorers’ system–time he has, considering he won’t be called upon to play until November 2015–it’s not a total shock to the system.

“[Betko] kind of prepared me to come here as much as he can because he’s been through that,” Sakhniuk said. “The type of practices that we had and the intensity and everything, it kind of looks like here.”

At 6-7 and 220 pounds, Sakhniuk is a combo forward with the ability to play inside or out. Giannini compared him in some ways to recent St. Joseph’s grad Halil Kanacevic, a 6-8 forward with a Euro-style game that showed off his Serbian roots; however, Sakhniuk is much more athletic than the mostly-grounded Kanacevic, as he showed by jumping over a teammate at a FIBA dunk competition this year.

“He plays much bigger than his size,” Giannini said. “He’s a terrific rebounder, he’s very strong inside, but he’s also good outside. We have him doing drills with our guards and our big guys.

“We think, Kanacevic was a great player at St. Joe’s and no two players are alike, but they’re similar. Besides both being from Europe, they’re similar in that they’re both very good inside and outside. Yevgen’s smaller, but he’s also maybe more athletic.”

In addition to Sakhniuk bringing something to the table that the Explorers don’t quite have on the roster right now, he also keeps in line with Giannini’s goal of having experienced players ready to replace those who graduate.

Just like transfers Jordan Price and Cleon Roberts–as well as redshirt freshman Amar Stukes–were groomed for a year to take over for the just-graduated trio of Ty Garland, Tyreek Duren and Sam Mills in the backcourt, it’ll be Sakhniuk and redshirt freshman Tony Washington who will have to step up next year when starting forwards Jerrell Wright and Steve Zack graduate.

“What we don’t want to have are rebuilding situations, we want to anticipate our losses,” Giannini said. “Right now the plan is we know Steve and Jerrell are really good and we’re going to lose them, but we also know that Tony is really good and he’ll be in his third year with us, and Yevgen is really good and he’ll be in his second year with us.”

The first basketball player in his family, Sakhniuk was introduced to the game as a 10-year-old, when he just enjoyed it as a way to release some energy and run around. As he continued to grow and mature, however, it became clear that his future in the sport was very bright.

And although his physical tools are clearly good enough to compete at the Division I level, he said he sees the sport as an “intelligence” game when you’re on the court, and one where it’s about what you do off it that makes the big difference.

“I think it’s one of the ways how you can get better, not spending time talking and messing around. You’ve got to push yourself and keep getting better every day because there are a lot of guys like you in the world, in the country, everywhere,” he said. “So if you [want] to be better you’ve got to push and work every day.”