Season Is Finished

The season is officially over for us. We played well towards the end of the year, but ended up losing in a close Game 5 in the playoffs. It was a great year here in Brazil. My wife and I truly loved it. The weather was unbelievable, the culture was fun, food was tasty, and we saw so many amazing things during our half a year stay in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. We will definitely miss living here but are also excited to go home to see our family and friends once again. I will post some more pictures later on, but for now I say goodbye from Brazil!

Series is now at 2-1

We picked up a big win to go ahead in the series 2-1. Our last game was a tough one as both teams played very well. It was back and forth the whole way through. We were even down with a couple minutes to go, but pulled ahead to win 80-78. We are at home on Sunday, April 17 looking to close out the series.

The Roof Is On Fire....Literally

Playoffs began well for our team as we won the first game of the best of 5 series against Joinville. We played well and were up by 15 points at halftime. Joinville came back strong but we held them off to win the game 83-81. I ended the night shooting 100% from the field which felt good. Our second game was on the road. Both teams were playing tough playoff defense and neither team could get going offensively. We went into halftime down 27-33. After our halftime talk in the lockerroom, we came back out onto the court where the arena was filled with smoke. It smelled as though the building was on fire. We looked up and realized that it actually was!! One of the lights had overheated and caught fire. I found it kind of amussing though that nobody left there seat. Everyone simply stayed seated and watch as the roof burned. No fire alarm, and no sprinklers went off. After about 30 minutes of waiting (apparentely for the fire to run its course), the fire department showed up. They didn't feel like it was necessary to put the fire out though and said it would eventually burn out. Sparks were falling to the floor and the entire building was filled with a thick metallic smoke. It finally did burn out and a couple short minutes later we started the second half. It seemed a bit dangerous to play underneath a light fixture that was just sparking and emitting a 3 foot fire, but play resumed anyway. The second half started well for the home team as they made a few 3's and got the crowd behind them. Add after a few technical fouls from our team for complaining about calls and no-calls, we found ourselves down 15 with 5 minutes to go. We gave a final push to draw within 4 with just over a minute to go, but after being forced to foul, Joinville made their free throws and we lost by a final score of 77-84. The series is at 1-1. Two more wins needed to advance.

End of Regular Season

We just finished out our regular season. After getting on a winning streak and beating some very good teams, we ended up dropping a few in a row to put us back in the middle of the league standings. Our last weekend of regular season games was a good one though as we went on the road and played very well. This included a 28 point road win where we looked very good as a team. So now on to post-season play. There are 15 teams in our league and the top 12 made playoffs. Like I said before, we ended the regular season in the middle of the league with a record around .500. The playoffs will be interesting as we have seen each team play well against any other given apponent. We, for instance, have beaten the top 3 seeds but also have had tough games against the lower seeds. So it will come down to whoever plays well. We will see...

Just a quick note...last weekend we split with a win and a loss. That now brings our record to 12-8. We have 8 games remaining in the regular season. This weekend we are in Sao Paulo for two games. Sao Paulo is Brazil's largest city.

5 Straight Wins

We just picked up another road win today. That makes it 5 straight wins to bring us to 11-7 overall. This game was tough though. We were down the entire game and dug in on defense to give us a chance to win in the end: 73-71. I know earlier I said I was only going to update my blog every few weeks, and since I said that the other day I have already posted 3 times. So, I guess that means I will post updates when I have a chance but don't be surprised if I go 2 or 3 weeks between postings. Well, I better go now...we have the afternoon off here in Vitoria and I am looking out my window at the beach calling my name....Ciao!

Road Trip

OK... I know I said I wasn't going to update my blog for a while yet, but we are on a road trip and I have some free time so I thought I would write a quick update on our last couple games. We are playing well together at the moment as we have piled together a nice little 4 game winning streak. We are now standing with 10 wins and 7 losses. We are in Vitoria this weekend staying on the beach. As you can see from the photo it is a beautiful scenic place. Our hotel is in the bottom right side of the picture. It is fun to be traveling and seeing different unique cities like this while playing ball. I feel blessed. I just need to be careful...my Minnesota skin can't handle too much of this Brazilian summer sun!