The boys from Piter set to bring their opponents bitter days at Bucharest Challenger

At first glance, BM-18 appers to be a team put together in a hurry. Igor Medyntcev and Shalva Shatashvili are the two players constantly enrolled in 2017 tournaments as part of the team, but they as well have migrated to other quartets. Nikolai Shangychev is, without doubt, the most important transfer, while Alex Abrikosov will play for the first time under this name. It is from this difficult to manage situation that Abrikosov, who in the past has brought one of Russia’s two 3rd place finishes at Bucharest Challenger, will try to do with the new teammates what no other Russian has done before: to play a final at the Challenger in Bucharest.

Star player: Nikolay Șangichev

The first thing that impresses with the 1.87 m basketball player is the number of tournaments played in 2017: 21. The Russian basically started the year on the basketball court, with a first trophy conquered on January 5th, at the Winter Tour Breda. Since then, the 30-year-old has booked 20 other tournaments and the huge volume of contests propelled him as Rusia’s 10th 3×3 player (# 124 in the World Rankings). However, there were few highlights for him so far: out of three Challenger participations, he can only be happy about the 4th place sealed in Malaysia (mid-May), while for the other two tournaments, the position in the final standings was all but pleasing – 13 and 15, respectively.

The team also raises curiosity from another point of view: the Piter squad is weak when it comes to height. Of the four players who will come to compete at the University Square, none is over 1.95 meters.

BM-18 competed for Petersburg at the 2016 Bucharest Challenger. From that squad, Shalva Shatashvili and Nikolai Shangichev will return to Romania.

Previous Raiffeisen Bank Bucharest Challenger participation: 2016

Best result: 10th place – 2016

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