Former Aztecs forward was playing for BC Odessa on Ukraine's southern coast when Russia invaded
“The lightest of light sleepers,” he says. “A wind breeze will wake me up.”It was shortly after 5 a.m. on Feb. 24, in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa on the Black Sea. Shepard, a San Diego State alum now playing for the BC Odessa professional basketball team, shot out of bed and turned on his phone. It was blowing up, too.
But his 6-foot-8 frame was stuffed into the backseat of a speeding car across the Ukrainian countryside. And he had an hour’s notice to cram what belongings he could into a single suitcase and make a run for the Romanian border. Things were going well. He liked the historic city on the shores of Black Sea, liked the people, liked the coaches, liked his teammates. He was shooting 40 percent behind the 3-point arc and averaging nearly 10 rebounds per game. On Feb. 10, he played 36 minutes and had a double-double in a 75-66 win against Mykolaiv.
“The Ukrainian people,” Shepard says, “the coaches, the doctors, the teammates, the grocery store workers, the restaurant workers, everybody was convinced or trying to convince me that, ‘There’s nothing that’s going to happen, we’re not worried one bit, everything will continue to operate as normal, we will continue to practice and travel and have games.’
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