Vitaliy Stepanovskyi has left the men's national basketball team.
The Basketball Federation of Ukraine (BFU) has terminated its cooperation with the head coach of the Ukrainian men's national team Vitaliy Stepanovskyi.
This was reported on the official website of the BFU.
The decision to end the cooperation was made by the members of the FBU Executive Committee at their vote on December 28.
The main reason for this was the unsatisfactory performance of the Ukrainian men's team in the qualification for EuroBasket 2025, where the national team suffered 4 defeats in 4 matches.
Stepanovskiy took charge of the national team in April 2023. Under his leadership, the Ukrainian team played eight official matches, winning two.
The name of the new head coach of the Ukrainian men's basketball team will be announced soon.
Recall that in the 2025 European Championship qualifiers, the Ukrainian basketball players lost to Slovenia (73:87) and Portugal (77:79), and also lost twice to Israel (73:86, 75:88).
After four rounds, the Ukrainians (0 wins) occupy the fourth and last place in the Group A table. Slovenia and Israel are in the lead, having won 3 victories each. Portugal is in third place (2 wins).
The Ukrainian team will play the final matches of the EuroBasket 2025 qualifiers early next year against Slovenia (February 21) and Portugal (February 24). The three best teams from the group where the “blue-yellows” are playing will advance to the European Championship.
The Ukrainian national team still has a chance to qualify for the continental championship: to do this, our team needs to beat the Slovenians and the Portuguese in the last matches and hope that Israel will beat Portugal. In such a scenario, the Ukrainians will be able to get ahead of the Portuguese in the fight for third place.
