Atlantic 10 Basketball: Impact of league’s “European Influence”

Max Shulga’s impact at VCU

From Kyiv, Ukraine to Torrelodones, Spain (outside Madrid), crossing an ocean to Logan, Utah and now onto Richmond, Virginia, Max Shulga has already lived in four corners of the world so different in culture that most people wouldn’t even experience in a lifetime of vacations.  But Shulga’s worldly perspective isn’t the only unique quality he’s brought to VCU, as it’s also rare to stumble across a college player who brings his combination of secondary playmaking and lethal three-point shooting without being ball dominant.

There’s even a uniqueness to the circumstances that brought him to VCU in the first place. As a key starter on a Utah St team that made the NCAA Tournament last year and an Honorable Mention for All-Mountain West (a significantly better conference than the A-10 last year), an exit from the Aggies would have almost certainly led to a transfer to a power conference school. But Shulga (and fellow Utah St starter Sean Bairstow) chose to keep the same coach and followed Ryan Odom east.

That choice looms as the biggest reason why VCU remains an A-10 contender this season, rather than slogging through the rebuild that should be expected after losing a head coach and all five starters from an NCAA Tournament team. The Rams success will hinge in part on Shulga’s ability to shoulder the responsibility of being the go-to guy after sharing the backcourt with First Team All-Mountain West guard Steven Ashworth.

But while the label is new, Shulga is no stranger to shouldering the burden for his teams. Matthew Harris covered his time at Utah St for Deseret News and alluded to Shulga’s performance in big moments as his best attribute, ” Shulga was often the go-to ballhandler for high-pressure situations. He would take the final shot a lot of times. He had a frighteningly tough mentality that enabled him to go on attack mode if the opponent gained any steam.” Additionally, Harris praised Shulga’s defense, which is not nearly is lauded by others, “Shulga was also the primary on-ball defender taking on the other team’s best guy and was very tenacious in doing so.”

As far as comparing his game to those who have come before, Harris referred to Shulga’s mentality as “Kobe but Eastern European.” Interestingly enough, when asked what current player he likes to study, Shulga chose a different Laker guard, Austin Reaves. Shulga feels that they play a similar game due to Reaves’ ability to “be a good scorer when the team needs him to score or he can role play whenever he needs to, filling in the gaps to make the team stronger.” When he’s on the court, Shulga often finds a way to do both:

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That Reaves-esque mentality is perfect for Coach Odom’s offense that Harris described as “a finesse style of basketball that really uses the arc well.” At Utah St, Harris noted that Shulga made his biggest impact as a drive and kick player for stud three-point shooters, like Ashworth, Bairstow and Taylor Funk. It’s been a much different story in his first seven games at VCU, as the Rams four other starters have combined to shoot 18.4% from deep. The team has needed Shulga to score and he has in a major way, a career high 16.3 ppg, while still maintaining great efficiency (45.6/40.0/89.5) across his shooting splits, leading the team in assists and even kicking in 4.9 rebounds each game.

Shulga has thrived this season but don’t expect him to ever to put up the gaudy stats of higher usage rate stars. He loves the team basketball aspect of Odom’s philosophies and stuck with him knowing that it would be the opposite of receiving the star treatment, “I just love the way Coach Odom coaches, the way he treats people. He’s very competitive and very passionate about the game. I just love the way he coaches, everyone on the team succeeds. He doesn’t give preference to one guy over the other.”

The duo came together basically by accident, as Shulga was recruited by and played for Coach Craig Smith for one season before Smith left to take the same job at Utah. That was the same year that the transfer portal exploded and Shulga taking his talents elsewhere would not have been surprising and may have even been expected. But he waited to get a chance to learn about the new coaching staff and eventually decided to stay. As for his feelings looking back, Shulga simply remarked, “thankfully it turned out to be a very great choice.”

One decision that was easy for Max Shulga was choosing American college basketball over a European professional career. Growing up he got to watch March Madness on tv, and wanted to experience it himself.  It also helped that US colleges provide better facilities than the pro teams that Shulga would have played for early in his career. Put it all together, he felt there was no better environment and culture for a young player to develop.

It did however take him far from his home of Kyiv, Ukraine, his “favorite city in the world.” And there is at least one element that Shulga’s favorite city provides that no place in North America can properly replicate. “The thing that I definitely miss the most is the food,” said Shulga, “My favorite dish is probably borscht. It’s a soup with beets, chicken, cabbage, a whole bunch of things. It sounds weird to the American population but it’s very, very good.”

Unfortunately for Shulga, he hasn’t been able to visit home since spring 2021 due to the Russian invasion. After a few months of heavy worrying, he has been able to live with the worry and thankfully, Kyiv is over 400 kilometers away from the frontlines and his family has remained safe throughout the war.

Of the places he’s been, Shulga has found similarities and differences in some of his favorite things about each. His favorite thing about being out in Utah was the scenery, “The views are beautiful; the sunsets, the sunrises, the mountains, it’s just beautiful all around.” As for his favorite part about Utah St, “the games were lit,” a sentiment shared by Matthew Harris, “The atmosphere of playing in the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum is akin to some of the toughest places in the East Coast.”

While Shulga’s time in Richmond won’t offer him any striking mountain views (he’s on the wrong side of Virginia for that), the energy inside the Siegel Center is sure to give him a similar excitement as the Spectrum in Logan. Over in his first few months at VCU, Shulga has enjoyed some of the differences between the two, “I like that [Richmond] is an actual big city, like Kyiv is as well. It’s not a slow life, like Logan.” Plus, moving east has gotten him looking forward to the chance to play in New York City for the conference tournament. And with the way that Shulga has started off his season, and the talent on VCU’s roster around him, he’ll have a lot of influence over whether or not a new edition of the Rams can lift the trophy again.