As VCU’s Max Shulga prepares for NCAA Tournament in Denver, his heart still lies in homeland Ukraine

Thoughts of home drift in and out for Max Shulga, but life at Virginia Commonwealth moves too fast to leave much room to feel the pain from 5,000 miles away.

In rare quiet moments, the escape fades. And the VCU star will let it wash back over him, sirens erupting again this week in his birthplace of Kyiv, Ukraine, where the war that’s prevented him from returning to the culture he knows continues.

Shulga sat at a locker inside Ball Arena on Wednesday afternoon with an NCAA Tournament game to play Thursday, an ocean removed from the geopolitical conflict. There is nothing to be done here for “us regular people,” as he put it. No way to truly help, as a full ceasefire still hasn’t been reached in Ukraine.

“I can’t just be thinking about it every single day,” Shulga told The Denver Post on Wednesday, voice slightly resigned.

“Because, I’m just going to go crazy,” he continued. “You know what I mean?”

He is no regular person, though. The senior VCU guard will take a stage in Denver this week few from his home country have ever walked. Only 10 Ukrainian-born players have reached the NBA, according to BasketballReference.com. Just two of them, former Kansas guard Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk and Weber State forward Joel Bolomboy, played in the NCAA Tournament. None were their team’s leading scorer. Shulga has paced No. 11 seed VCU (28-6), entering a first-round tournament matchup with no. 6 BYU (24-9), averaging 15.1 points a game.

“If I can serve as an inspiration to young kids back home in Ukraine,” Shulga said, after largely shrugging off a question on representing his home, “then yeah, that’s something that I’m definitely willing to do and put on for my country.”

Shulga came from Ukraine to the United States at 18 to play college basketball, his television set in Kyiv often tuned to the madness come March. The chance to play in the tournament, he said, was what he’d dreamt of since childhood.

And if watching him play proved any solace to those growing up in Ukraine, that’d be “perfect,” he said. Because the game has been his solace, too.

“You just gotta find a way to live through it, and not really sit and cry about it, you know?” Shulga said. “Cause I’m not the only one. There’s a lot of people in the same position.

“So, you’ve got to find ways to just, still be positive, and just move forward.”

Coach/counselor: Travis DeCuire talked about program-building during Wednesday’s news conference at Ball Arena.

Once a counselor for eight years, the Montana head coach has relied on his ability to foster relationships to set a new standard for Grizzlies men’s basketball in Missoula. His close bond with first-year guard Joe Pridgen is just the latest example.

Pridgen, who transferred to Montana following two seasons at Northeastern, explained that DeCuire “takes his job off the court just as seriously as he does on the court, and that translates.”

The player and coach had a serious conversation earlier in the season that allowed Pridgen to settle into his time in Missoula and become a better father to his daughter, Samarra, who was born last year.

“Early in the year, my mom’s a single mother, and I was having a lot of father issues coming here and just kind of trying to change my lifestyle,” Pridgen said. “I expressed that to him early on this season, because I didn’t want him to think I was being a problem or anything like that, and he took care of me, no sweat.

“He called me into his office, had a conversation with me, gave me some advice for my manhood and just how to go forward, being a father of my own now.”

From his perspective, DeCuire said that having a player “that gets up in the morning and changes diapers, and might not go to bed when he’s tired every night but still shows up to practice every day and doesn’t complain, is healthy (for the team).”