Now in her second season of Canadian university basketball, 18-year-old Russian import guard Viktoriia Filatova has been a perfect fit for the UNBC Timberwolves.
Averaging 15.8 points per game, she leads the TWolves in scoring and ranks sixth in the Canada West Conference.
Not bad considering she’s started only four of UNBC’s eight games.
In the TWolves’ most recent game action, Nov. 22-23 at the Northern Sport Centre, Filatova came off bench in fine style, posting back-to-back 18-point efforts to spur comeback wins over the UBC-Okanagan Heat.
In the second game of that doubleheader, the TWolves and Heat were tied 66-66 when UNBC head coach Sergey Shchepotkin called a timeout with 14 seconds left on the clock. He elected Filatova to take the ball and she did the rest, driving the ball into the key with a slick inside-out move to lose her check and sink the layup for the winning points.
Money in the bank.
That 68-67 squeaker brought the TWolves (3-5, fifth in Pacific) back into the Canada West playoff race.
Shchepotkin has looked to his home country’s Russian recruits to raise the TWolves’ talent base considerably in recent years. Five years ago he brought in forward Sveta Boykova, now the fourth-ranked rebounder in the conference, and also attracted shooting guard Alina Shakirova, now an assistant coach after five productive seasons with the TWolves. Shchepotkin also paved the way for Evgeny Baukin, the current UNBC men’s team scoring leader, who like Shakirova was a high school star at Duchess Park before he joined the TWolves.
“(Filatova) played at a pretty good level in Russia, she was at one of the best basketball schools so she had very good coaches in the game,” said Shchepotkin.
“She wanted to play in a high level and she heard from Evgeny’s father that there’s an opportunity in Canada so they contacted me and started working on coming here. They sent me a video and I could see she definitely has some potential. She’s a hard worker and all coaches told good things about her.
“She understands her foreigner position, that she needs to be a leader of the team and everybody’s watching her and she works really hard, spending a lot of time in the gym. She’s averaging 15 points and I think that’s pretty good for 18 years old. We can rely on her at the end of the game.”
Boykova is 10 years older at 28 and Shchepotkin says she’s more like a coach to Filatova and can be quite demanding of what she expects her to do to finish and get desired results. But they’ve worked out their roles and that’s improved the chemistry between the two talented Russians.
Her first season, Filatova played all 20 games, including one as a starter. She averaged eight points, 3.4 rebounds and 1.7 assists as one of the top rookies in the conference and was the obvious choice for UNBC’s rookie award. Schchepotkin said she played well enough to be on the Canada West all-rookie team but she was not chosen.
“It was one of my dreams to play and study abroad and my coach talked to coach Sergey and he told them we need to recruit new players,” said Filatova, a business/marketing major. “I came here to work hard and I was ready. I wasn’t my dream just to get here and relax, no. I just remember that every day I have to work hard and keep growing and my future will be really good.”
Filatova started playing basketball when she was eight. She likes the campus life at UNBC and it did not take her long to adjust to level of play in Canada West. The move to Prince George, a city of about 80,000, was a culture shock for Filatova, who was born and raised in Moscow, home to more than 13 million people, but she loves the community feel of a small city.
“I like Prince George, it’s a small town but everyone supports us and it really helps everywhere, so my coaches helped us when I just got here and my teammates, they’re supporting me every step with what I’m doing,” she said.
“The studying was hard at first when I first got here and I had the language barrier. I’m living out of campus, I have some good friends and they are so kind to me and I really like the people here. I really love the mentality of everyone and my sponsors here.”
Baukin and Filatova are both from Moscow and have known each other for years through basketball. The house where Filatova was raised is a seven-minute drive from the place where Boykova grew up and they attended the same sports school.
“I know it can be tough, because it’s a new country, new city, you don’t know people here, especially if you’re coming from the opposite side of the world, you don’t know the language here” said Baukin. “You have to make new friends when you have your whole life back home and you have to restart everything, but I feel she has a lot of support from her teammates, her friends and her family here. UNBC is one family, it helped me a lot. Even if you’re like local if you’re international or other side of the country or from Vancouver, you’re running as one.”
Baukin said Filatova never fails to impress him with her basketball instincts.
‘I’ve known her since she 14 or 15 back when I was in Russia and it’s really impressive how she’s getting better every day, every single game,” he said. “You can see her aggression on the offensive end and the defensive end, it’s really impressive. She’s young, but she’s always getting into the fight, into the fire with her teammates.”
After a six-week semester break the TWolves are back on the court this weekend when they visit Fraser Valley on Friday and UBC on Saturday. UNBC returns to Brownridge Court in a rare Thursday evening game on Jan. 16 when they host Victoria.
