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Yegor Mescheriakov

A Basketball Star Returns

After 11 years, former Colonial Yegor Mescheriakov comes back to finish his GW degree.
April 18, 2011
By Brad Bower

He first arrived in Washington during the fall of 1995 with a 10-word English vocabulary. He took nonstop English classes along with study halls and meetings with tutors. He even took part in preseason karate practices that began at 7 a.m. followed by more classes and three-hour basketball practices.

Fans who attended George Washington basketball games during the late 1990s will tell you he was one of the best players to ever don the Buff & Blue. In fact, he is the youngest member of GW’s All-Century Team, an unofficial list of the best players in GW basketball history that was compiled in 2001.

He is Yegor Mescheriakov (“YAY-gor Mes-SHARE-a-kov”), a lanky man from Minsk, Belarus, who played under former GW coach Mike Jarvis from 1995 to 1999. A rarity in the college game, he earned a bachelor’s degree prior to his senior season and returned to the team to play the 1998-99 season as a graduate student while pursuing a master’s degree in tourism administration.


Since leaving GW in the summer of 1999, he has played professional basketball in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Russia and the Ukraine.

Now, 11 years later, Mr. Mescheriakov has returned to campus to complete his master’s degree. He is on schedule to graduate this May and plans to participate in GW’s annual commencement ceremony on the National Mall. After graduation, Mr. Mescheriakov says he is mulling over whether to play a couple more years overseas or remain in the United States to begin his post-basketball career.

Either way, he says his future will be related to the sports business, perhaps as a team general manager, coach, agent/scout or an industry professional within international sport governing bodies.

“I have this vision for improving society at the community level through sports and sports-related tourism and also of promoting the sport of basketball in Belarus through my basketball academy, eventually opening frontiers to young athletes by presenting them with the same kind of opportunities that were available to me,” Mr. Mescheriakov says.

His basketball academy, called the Mescheriakov Basketball Club (MBC), was established in September 2009. He, along with a friend, founded and sponsors the academy that includes approximately 120 children ages 10 to 14. The oldest squad, a group of 14-year-olds, won the Belarus championship the last two years.

The academy rents three basketball gyms and has a staff of five coaches and one operational manager. The teams participate in local Belarus competition and in international tournaments in nearby Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine.
One of the goals is to promote the sport of basketball in Belarus and create opportunities for young athletes to continue their general and basketball education at American and European universities.
Through the academy, Mr. Mescheriakov also aims to establish a basketball network among Eastern European countries that includes coaching clinics, tournaments and summer camps.
For now, Mr. Mescheriakov and Tanya, his wife of more than 10 years, rent an apartment in Georgetown that looks out on the Rosslyn skyline and the Potomac River, a view that especially appeals to Tanya, an avid photographer.

Returning to the GW campus has rekindled fond memories of his undergraduate days in Foggy Bottom, beginning with the Colonials’ upset of top-ranked Massachusetts during his freshman season in 1996.

He also lists as favorite memories the team’s march to a 20-3 record and No. 17 national ranking in 1998 as well as playing with Colonials teammates from nine different countries and four different continents under Mr. Jarvis.

But it was one teammate from nearby Baltimore who impressed Mr. Mescheriakov the most. “Amazing Shawnta Rogers was the 1998-99 Atlantic 10 Player of the Year, at 5-foot-4!” he says. “He [Rogers] hit three buzzer-beaters his senior season.” Mr. Mescheriakov and Mr. Rogers have reunited -- and faced off -- several times while playing for opposing teams in European professional clubs competitions.

But Mr. Mescheriakov also was a big reason those Colonials teams won. He shared preseason All-America honors with the likes of future NBA standouts Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison. The GW student section would often chant “Yegor-meister!” following one of his dunks or long three-pointers.

There were some bittersweet moments as well. “I remember the excitement of going to the postseason every year, three NCAA tournaments and one NIT, only to lose in the first round every time,” says Mr. Mescheriakov.

He uses Facebook to keep in contact with many of his former teammates, including countrymen Andrei Krivonos, B.A. ’98, who is currently a head basketball coach for the Minsk 2006 professional team in Belarus, and Alexander Koul, B.A. ’98, who is playing on that team.

Among his teammates who have gone on to bigger things, Mr. Mecheriakov points to Andrei Sviridov, B.A. ’96, whom Mr. Mescheriakov calls “a promising 7-foot actor currently featured in a popular Russian sitcom called ‘University’.”

The Belarusian has attended a handful of GW basketball games during the 2010-11 season and has met most of the current players. “They are well-rounded and a great group of guys who went through a lot of adversity this year,” Mr. Mescheriakov says.
“Not many teams have a 17-14 winning season after losing their key player [Lasan Kromah] to an injury. I could definitely see GW winning 20-plus games with Lasan on the court, but ‘should have and would have’ does not count in sports,” he says. “The GW coaching staff deserves praise for making this team win and stay together through the storm.”
While he says there were multiple reasons behind his decision to take a break from his professional basketball career in Europe, coming back to GW was an easy choice.
“I cherish every single day at GW,” he says.

Mr. Mescheriakov blogs at europrobasketinsider.blogspot.com.