2 Wins

That last Italian game went as expected. They are a very good team that has the ability to do well in our league, but they are not better than we are, especially in our house! They were winning most of the game, and we weren't playing good defense at all, and struggled a bit with their mix of man and zone. However, one characteristic of our team that I LOVE is that whatever happens, we always think we are going to win in the end. It's an awesome thing to play with a "go-to" player like our American post player, and she was a BEAST! She had 26 points in the game. We made a surge at the end of the game against that box-and-one (which is a 2-2 zone and one guard plays man-to-man, and to my surprise the other coach respected my three point shot so much, the guard followed me wherever I went). I only got one three point shot off the whole night, but I made it :)

We travelled all the way to Lithuania this week, which took about 10 hours or so each way, and played against the worst team in our pool in Euroleague. They haven't won a game yet, so we should have killed them, but it was a much closer game. Because of foul trouble and injuries I ended up playing more than anyone even though my knee kept me from practicing the day before. I was probably a little bit fresher than the others, so no harm done in the end, I suppose. I had my point best in my short career so far in Euroleague with 18, so I was pleased with that. Here's my stats after the first round--http://www.fibaeurope.com/cid_KNce8jInH7Qj1EsyH5rjn2.compID_jr6ZiXqeGhMBtfq1yxqV83.roundID_7048.season_2010.teamID_92200.playerID_71492.html. We will go back and play everyone another time, and I would be a fool to expect to be able to play the same way as easily as before. Teams didn't know me at the time, so it's a different battle now.

Bar-B-Que

I've made some buddies around Taranto, which is just so good for the mental health to just get out of the apartment and forget about basketball for a while. It's our life! Plus, athletes are so lazy, myself included. When we aren't practicing, so often we just sit in our apartments, on the computer or watching TV. And in the words of one of my American teammates, "That's a lame way to live!"

Anyways, these buddies all surf and live near the sea (I know how to pick my friends, right!?); one even has a boat that we went on around the city. One of them had a Bar-B-Que last night and I insisted that we watch the LSU game that was coming on (which was my first game the entire season to watch... Thank goodness for the channel ESPN America!!!). Now, the entire group couldn't give a "flip" about American football, but one of the guys was watching with me and even joined in my "L-S-U" chant with me!!! It was a classic moment with his Italian accent and trying to mimic the "L-Sssshoe" sound that I was actually making that now that I think about it probably didn't make much sense. He was a good sport though and watched three quarters with me until I went home to watch the end and get some sleep. (Un)Fortunately, I saw the end of the game.... The clock ticked from 34 seconds to 9 seconds before LSU called a timeout and then Les said that they didn't have time to get the kicking team on, so that's why they decided to try and spike the ball with one second left on the clock at an away game!!! At home, you might get a little help, but come on... That was lame-o.....

Alright, we have a game today and my knee is feeling better. They are another top Italian team, so it will be a toughy!

Historical!

Ok, well, all is NOT going well, we played horribly but still won at home Sunday for our Italian league game, and I'm having knee problems, but any bad stuff that we've encountered thus far this season, has almost completely been erased from the experience we've just been through last night. It's so difficult to capture the moments we had in our last game against a top four Euroleague team (which basically means a top four team in the world...). We led the entire game and had enough of a cushion in the end to withhold their last run and still win by 9 points. Our coach said it was a David vs. Goliath kind of match, but I like to think we were much closer in matchups than those two even though they were taller than us at every single position...

Now, we are NOT better than the Spanish team we just beat. They have two WNBA All-Stars on their team to go along with 2 or 3 other Euroleague All-Stars, and their Spanish players are BIG and well-rounded players. If we had to play them 10 times they might win 8 or 9, but luckily, with our crowd, we got'em last night! :)

Our team played "out of our minds" well (myself included--3 for 3 from 3). We just had no fear going into this game that most teams have when they face these guys. If I'm proudest of anything it's of that lack of fear and how much heart we put in to playing for a complete 40 minutes. If we had let up for a minute or two, they probably win the game. The crowd, which can turn on you at any second I've heard, treated us like rockstars, which was awesome. We still sign loads of autographs and take several pictures with people after the games, and they tell you how fantastic you are. I hope all of our heads don't explode with ego because we have a really tough Italian league game Sunday which is the only other Italian team also playing in the Euroleague. It will be a great chance for us to put some space between us and other teams. My knee is still bothering me, so please say some prayers!

First Euroleague win!

So, we won the team's first ever Euroleague game on the road at Riga, Latvia. I could not have told you exactly where it was until my dad explained it was one of the Baltic states with Lithuania and Estonia. We got pretty close to Russia up there! We are still not where we want to be as far as playing in rhythm as a team, but this was a big step for us. I set a personal best of 5 three pointers with this team in the game, so I was happy with that :)

We also won our last Italian game in Naples. It was probably the worst game we've played so far this year, partially because we struggle against teams that play a lot of zone (which they did most of the game...). I could not make even one three point shot (so the Law of Averages caught up with me last game!) but we still won, keeping our undefeated Italian League streak alive at 5!

Sunday we play at home against Milan, a team that is known for playing 30 out of 40 minutes in a zone defense, so hopefully we can get our zone offense working well with attacking it and knocking down jump shots.

Lastly, I had to share this picture. This is probably the smallest player in our league; she's a very crafty (sometimes dirty, but mostly annoying...) player as she is caught here red-handedly grabbing a defenders arm to then continue to flail and flop over to get fouls called (including this possession here). She's a good player, and I don't think she needs to stoop this low, but whatev... Thought you guys would appreciate it.

A Victory within a Loss

Wow, what a high I was on last night. And I'm not talking about being on anything because of the stomach flu I had this week, but a natural, just happy with the world type of high. We played against a Russian team (which is one of the top teams in the world when they have Cappie Pondexter, arguably the best player in the world healthy and playing) who were supposed to kill us even at our house missing a couple of players. I think they had two or three players over 6' 3" tall, and they were just taller at every other position as well. I wasn't expecting to play a whole lot (remember last Euroleague game? 15 min...) however, a normal starter was out due to the flu, so someone else started in her place and I came off the bench. I had an ok first half, and then I blew up offensively in the second half. I finished with 16 which may as well be 30 against almost any team in the Italian league. We were winning most of the game as well, but in the last few minutes they made a run, and we lost a post player to an injury, and we ended up losing by 5 or so....

Our crowd was fantastic as usual. One knew it was going to be a great game when that person saw the mascot battle 30 minutes before the game. Their mascot was a fox (they actually had fans there!) and our's is a dolphin. The fox had a blow horn like many of our fans, and was going around having little beeping battles while we were warming up. Well, dolphins don't have hands much less opposable thumbs, so what were we to do??? Well, the "delfino" poked a hand out of course! Our president gave him his blow horn and the battle continued.

I'm really proud of our team and how we fought. We showed that if we can play with this team, we should be able to play together and battle against pretty much anyone. And I had the opportunity to show that I can play with some of the best as well... on national TV :) Obviously, I hope we always have a healthy team, but God was looking out for me to have this chance to shine. Now that other teams may be expecting me, the job gets a bit more difficult! Gotta keep working hard :)

Istanbul, Turkey

Well, there's not much to report on the game (we lost, and I didn't play much, but did hit 2 three's) but Istanbul was a city to report about! It was more "Americanized" than we thought with many chains available including McDonald's (which are everywhere!), KFC and Popeye's, Domino's, and Starbucks just to name what we saw of this humongous city. I also did not know that half of Turkey is considered part of Europe, and then across a body of water, the other side is considered part of Asia. Very strange, and they accept both the Euro and "Lire", I believe it's called, in most places.

The Americans took a taxi out to downtown the day before the game, and we were able to go into one of the hundreds of mosques (their places of worship) and a bazaar, which is like their version of a flea market, I suppose. One of the strangest rituals, and at times scary if you don't know what's going on and you get woken up in the middle of the night, is that every 5 hours or so, the mosques get on a loud speaker and sing out their prayers to where the whole area hears. If you are near two mosques, it's almost like they are competing to be heard.

We found some great deals at the Bazaar, but then found out that we got gypped because we didn't shop around first... Anyways, they specialize in mostly scarves, and we bought several of them with a very soft material that would cost you 70 bucks or more in the states for about 10 to 20 there.

We won big Sunday in our Italian league game even though I had one of the worst shooting nights ever! It's nice to spank people when they come to your gym though. It's like back in high school where you're so good you do get a lot of team's "A" game when they play you, but there are those teams that already think they lost when they walk into the gym to play you, which is fantastic! :)