Veteran Russian internationals Vasili Karasev and Dmitri Domani will not play at the EuroBasket in Serbia & Montenegro, coach Sergei Babkov has announced.
Babkov, in an interview with the Sport-Express newspaper, revealed the 34-year-old Karasev has decided to retire while Domani has been dropped.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Andrey Ivanov
|
|
|
Both were members of the team which won a silver medal at FIBA World Championship 1998 in Greece and have been regular national team players since.
They were in the squad which finished eighth at EuroBasket 2003 in Sweden. Babkov has called up Dynamo St Petersburg's emerging guard Andrey Ivanov, a member of the side that won last season's FIBA Europe League crown under coach David Blatt.
The 1.96m guard averaged 6.5 points in almost 18 minutes a game for Blatt.
American guard Jon Holden of CSKA Moscow, who has Russian citizenship, has finally linked up with the team at their training camp in Novogorsk on Tuesday.
Russia are in Group A with Germany, Italy and Ukraine.