Photo: Lāsma Irša
Latvian basketball player Lauris Blaus will continue to play for the Latvian-Estonian Basketball League (LIBL) unit “Ogre” after leaving the Ukrainian club “Odessa”, the club said on its Facebook page on Saturday. It has already been reported that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, foreign players are leaving the country and looking for jobs in teams from other countries.
“The team player Blaus is joining the team. We have agreed on cooperation for this and next season, “says an entry in Ogre’s Facebook account. This season, Blaus scored 6.3 points on average in the Ukrainian championship and won 2.7 rebounds.
For Blau, it was his return to the Odessa club, where he played nine games in the 2018 Ukrainian championship, scoring an average of 11 points, scoring six rebounds and playing twice twice. In the 2020/2021 season, in the ranks of Blaus “Parnu Sadam”, LIBL scored 8.3 points in an average of 21 minutes and 58 seconds in the game and won 5.4 rebounds.
The Latvian basketball player has been playing for the Estonian team since 2019. In the 2018/2019 season, he played for Ventspils and the Jurmala Club. He has also played in Latvia in the teams of Ķeizarmeža, VEF Rīga, Liepāja and Valmiera / ORDO. Together with the VEF Rīga team, Blaus became the Latvian champion in 2013, but did the same in Valmiera in 2016.
As a legionnaire, Blaus has also gone to teams in Lithuania and Poland. In 2011, the basketball player made his debut in the Latvian adult team, which he represented in four test games, scoring 12 points. It has already been reported that another Odessa player Tom Leimanis will continue the season in Klaipeda’s Neptune team. The Odessa team took the tenth place among 12 teams in the Ukrainian championship with ten victories in 30 games this season. The Ogre LIBL Championship, with 11 wins in 19 games, is the sixth in a 14-team competition.
