Former NCAA basketball star Maurice Creek heads home after getting stuck in Ukraine

MAURICE CREEK RIDES in the backseat of a car on Monday morning and stares at the turmoil all around as the driver heads to the border: Barricades. Sandbags. Tanks. Soldiers.

The car inches through the streets of Mykolaiv, a small city in Southern Ukraine that he has called home for the past two months. The American basketball player is terrified of being spotted by the Russian soldiers. Don’t get caught. Don’t get caught, he repeats to himself.

He practices the two phrases he had memorized in Ukrainian and Russian.

Don’t shoot. I am American.

The last four days of his life appear in images. Waking up to sirens. Packing a grocery bag with essentials. Huddling in a bomb shelter. Hearing bombs around him and believing he was about to die in the Russian invasion.

The driver pulls up to a Ukrainian checkpoint, and Creek shudders in his seat. He reaches out the window and hands over his passport to a Ukrainian soldier. He is in the car with two Ukrainian women, the wife and mother-in-law of his Ukrainian basketball team’s assistant coach. They’re leaving their husband and son-in-law behind. Guilt gnaws at Creek knowing his assistant coach and countless Ukrainians are still in danger and don’t have a way out.

He prays he still does.

He fears the Ukrainian soldiers will send him back or ask him to join the fight. They don’t know my story. They don’t know I am American, he thinks. They hand him his passport back. He exhales. They drive on.

It’s five days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Creek is being driven west from Mykolaiv to the Moldovan border, via Odessa. Four hours and another checkpoint later, Creek gets dropped off near the Moldovan border and parts ways with his coach’s family. At least 700 people wait in line ahead of him. It’s past sunset and the temperature drops below 30 degrees. Creek doesn’t have gloves, so he rubs his palms together to stay warm.

He stands in line for nine hours, way past midnight. He has sunflower seeds in his bag, but he can’t bring…