FRESH FROM GW TODAY NEWS WIRE: THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!

---

---

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.

The American Life: Playing Basketball for GWU Colonials

After winning the gold medal in European U22 Championship in Slovenia, I spent another season playing in Belarus and won second consecutive National Championship with the local team RTI Minsk becoming a top scorer and MVP of 1994-95 season. I was still a teenager - just under 19 years of age - when I got a call from George Washington University coaches and, barely speaking English, understood their interest in bringing my friend Andrei Krivonos and me over to the GWU Foggy Bottom campus in U.S. Capital.

My teammates and I never got paid for playing basketball in Belarus back in those days so we were able to safely transfer ourselves (and our college credits) into the entirely new environment - NCAA. To say that we were ready for the American adventure is an understatement; we were eager to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we belonged! We were fully aware of difficulties ... and yet we totally embraced them.

Final Part. The Life after... Winning European Championship.

As we jumped for joy and celebrated our victory in Ljubljana, little did we know that Belarus team will never be assembled according to its current 1994 roster ever again. That is the saddest part of modern team sports in general, and basketball in particular. We were young and when you young you don't think about things like this ... Not that thinking would help or change the flow of events that soon followed.



It turns out that there were some US College coaches among the fans in Slovenia and they had the eyes on our team. Their names were Mike Jarvis and Scott Beeten. As the story goes, Alexander Koul and Andrei Sviridov - the two 7' footers (2m10cm) - were the first to safely depart to the U.S. soil and join The George Washington Colonials for the 1994/95 season. Andrei Krivonos and I had followed that path a year later, after winning yet another Belarus Championship title in 1995.

My History: 1999 NBA Aspirations - GWU Hatchet Newspaper Article

Mescheriakov readies for future 

Zach Leibowitz

by Hatchet Sport Writer

Issue: 4/26/99 | Sports

Only a few GWU basketball players are remembered by every fan who has witnessed a Colonials game. Graduate student Yegor Mescheriakov is one of them.Standing at 6-9, Mescheriakov has dazzled fans with his intense slam dunks and dynamic all-around skills. In the last four years, Mescheriakov has helped give the GWU basketball program a higher profile. He hopes to continue representing GWU in the NBA.

“My time at GWU has been very positive, but it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t supposed to be. It’s college,” Mescheriakov said. “I matured and developed myself here, and I’m grateful for this experience.”