Tom Rock: German Plotnikov has made an impact on Hofstra's program
TAMPA, FLORIDA - MARCH 20: German Plotnikov #25 of the Hofstra Pride dunks the ball during the second half against the Alabama Crimson Tide in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Benchmark International Arena on March 20, 2026 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Mike Carlson/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images/Mike Carlson
TAMPA, Fla. — When Hofstra assistant coach Tom Parrotta drove out to LaGuardia to pick up a recruit he’d never met, he set the scene for the kid pretty quickly.
“There were no strings attached,” Parrotta recalled. “There was no scholarship, no nothing. We were going on tape at the time. I told him, ‘You are coming here and 48 hours later you are either going to leave with a scholarship offer or you are going to chalk this up to experience.’ ”
German Plotnikov’s expectations were similarly low. He’d never even heard of Hofstra until he was at North Platte Community College in Nebraska and one of his high school coaches, Mounir Benzegala, suggested the Long Island program might be a fit for him. “I was like, ‘OK, Coach, whatever,’ ” Plotnikov said.
That was five years ago.
Plotnikov earned the scholarship. He fought for time on the court as a freshman and improved over the seasons. He climbed the list of games played at Hofstra, reaching a tie for the fourth-most in school history with 128. Given the landscape of college sports these days, he might very well be the last player to ever play all four years of his eligibility exclusively for the Pride. He calls himself “the ‘unc’ of the team” because he predates just about everyone else.
Basically, from the day of that airport pickup through Friday’s 90-70 first-round loss to Alabama in the NCAA Tournament in which he scored 12 points, Hofstra became his home. He never left it.
Now, though, he must.
And that’s the tricky part for Plotnikov. He left his home in Minsk, Belarus, in 2018 when he was 17 years old, and because of the political climate there, he has never gone back.
“I would love to,” he told Newsday, “but the situation in the country is not the best, not the most pleasant for me, so I try to stay where I am safe. Here in America is where I have felt the safest the last few years.”
The problem is his student visa is going to expire with his playing and academic career. His single mother, Olga, who raised him and reluctantly sent him to America, recently moved to the United States and is living in North Carolina just outside Charlotte. He has an American girlfriend. He was a fan favorite at Hofstra for four seasons, an integral part of the program’s growth into an NCAA Tournament team and a quasi-member of the Parrotta family (he spent Christmases at their home and developed a close relationship with Parrotta’s recently deceased father-in-law).
None of that matters, though. He might not be able to remain in the country.
Where will he go?
“I don’t know yet,” he said in the locker room in Tampa on his last day as a player for the Pride. “We’ll see what the future holds.”
It’s always a little sad when any athletic season ends and people who have meant so much to a program graduate from it. And there can be a strange dynamic between the hope and optimism of those who will be back next season — which Hofstra certainly has now — and those who won’t be around to take part in that progress any longer.
With Plotnikov, though, there is genuine concern about his well-being.
“Unfortunately, what is going on in his country right now, I don’t know what the future holds for him,” Parrotta said. “We’re obviously going to do everything we can to make sure he is safe and happy because he deserves it. After this is over, his ride as a Hofstra student-athlete, we hope that it’s a happy ending with him and his mom here so they can start a life together in the United States.”
That would be the best way to wrap up his career and this chapter of his story. But there are political influences here as well as in Belarus that make such a neat transition very uncertain.
Belarus, situated between Russia and Ukraine, often is described in the media as “Europe’s last dictatorship.” It’s why Plotnikov — and, eventually, his mother — left.
“There is a reason I haven’t gone back there in eight years,” he said.
At some point soon, though, he might have to.
Plotnikov said he forged so many lifelong memories at Hofstra.
“Not a lot of kids in college basketball get to do what we did,” he said after the loss on Friday. “Not just talking about Hofstra, but college players in general, you know what I mean? It’s hard to get here [to the NCAA Tournament]. I'm happy me and my teammates got here. We're extremely grateful to be here.”
He’s left his own legacy, too.
“I don’t know that we could have said way back when that it would have turned out the way it did,” Parrotta said. “But he came in here and he won everybody over. The rest is history. The games played have meant a lot to us because of retention, but everybody loves him and it’s certainly warranted because he is a wonderful, wonderful guy . . . I don’t think Hofstra will ever say goodbye to him.”
Plotnikov might get a chance to play basketball professionally, either overseas or here. He’d obviously prefer here. Moving around so much — not just from Belarus to this country but also playing high school ball in Texas, junior college in Nebraska, where he said it was “me, the basketball gym, school and the cornfields,” and then with Hofstra just outside New York City — has taught him something about perspective and belonging.
“Home is where the family is,” he said.
His Hofstra family is here. The Parrottas are here. His mother, his only actual family, is here.
Hopefully, somehow, he can be too.
And maybe next year he can stop by the campus arena to watch many of his former teammates continue to build the program he was so instrumental in bringing to this point.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
