End of Preseason

The preseason is finished. We had a tournament this weekend at home to finish out the "friendly games". We are very excited to start the regular season play as we have come a long ways together as a team after coming together 6 weeks ago. We had a little time off these last couple days so I decided to get out of the city and visit a couple different cities. My first stop was Milan. It was 'fashion week' here in Milan so there were a lot of people there for the fashion shows and other events. The Duomo di Milano was a pretty spectacular site. This is the first large cathedral I have visited here in Italy and I was impressed. As you can see from the picture above it is quite the piece of artwork. I was stunned by the detail of the cathedral, down to the smallest pieces of sculpture. It was incredible. Milan is obviously known for its fashion and there were many designer stores there like D&G, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, and many more. I decided to go into the stores to see what I could find, but after picking up a pair of sunglasses I liked and reading the price tag that read 385.00 Euro, I decided I would just stick to the streets. I knew I wasn't going to find anything to my liking as I am not really into that sort of thing, but it was interesting going there anyway. It all was very interesting but my legs were getting tired from walking around, so I decided to head out to my next city. I went to Lake Como for a little bit just to look at the views there. I have already posted some pictures of the lake in previous blogs. After sitting down and enjoying the view for a while I decided to take off back home. I guess I should mention too that drivers here in Italy are CRAZY. I seriously was nervous for my life many times as cars fly past in both directions missing me by inches. I believe the lines on the roads (when there are any) are more like guidelines than actual rules for driving. Well, I am going to enjoy the rest of my day off before practice picks up again tomorrow.

Talk to you soon!

My Team

Yet another preseason game...

We played another preseason game on Tuesday. I know, it seems like we have been playing preseason games for a month now. I am excited to get the real games started. The game the other night was against that team from Switzerland that we had played a week or so ago. We accomplished some good things in the game although we did end up losing by 4 or so points in the end. We got off to a bit of a slow start defensively. The other team was draining threes and getting three point plays every possession it seemed. We came around in the second half however as we only allowed something like 30 points in the 3rd and 4th quarters combined. Personally I was shooting the ball fairly well as I connected on 4 threes in the game. Things are coming together for our team. Two more games this weekend, followed by a week of practice, and then finally into the regular season.

Talk to you soon.

Quick Weather Update

The first couple weeks I was here in Italy it was "troppo caldo"... too hot!! Ha. It was above 100 degrees F everyday for a while. It has cooled down quite a bit the last week or so. It has been raining every few days and staying cloudy. I actually like this weather a lot. It is perfectly comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt. It stays in the 70's and 80's. I can't complain. I was talking to some of my Italian teammates and they said that it gets pretty cold in the winters. It even snows sometimes! Yikes, not sure if I will be prepared for the couple inches we might get ;)

Imola Preseason Tourney

We had a tournament this weekend with three other teams in our league. It was a 3 hour road trip to Imola, Italy. The first night we played the home team, Imola. We played fairly well but got into some serious foul trouble. I believe they shot around 33 free throws while we only scored 6 points at the stripe. Even with this handicap we had a chance to win late in the game. It was tied with about 35 seconds to go and Imola had the ball. The shot clock was winding down and they threw up a prayer from 3 that somehow found the bottom of the net. We were down three. We went to the other end and missed the opportunity to extend the game.

The next night we played well defensively. We did a lot of good things as team this game. Both on defense and offense we started to find some rhythm and chemistry. We still weren't hitting our shots like we would like to, but things are starting to come together. We started the game close but pulled away and ended up winning by around 15 points.

Preseason game against Lugano, Switzerland

We traveled to Switzerland on Tuesday for our first away game of the preseason. It was just accross the border and was only a 1.5 hour drive by bus. The scenery on the way was amazing. We drove through the mountains passing Lake Como. The picture to the left is a view of the lake and its city. We then came up to Lugano which had a very similar look to it. It was a city on the mountainside right next to a lake. It was a pretty neat place to visit. I have never seen anything quite like it. The pictures to the bottom right are views of the city where we played. The game itself was a lot of fun. We got off to a very slow start, falling behind 27-17 towards the end of the first quarter. We then played a lot tougher on defense and ended up tying the game just before the half was over. The second half was a continuation of the 2nd quarter as we played tough defense which lead to some good offense as well. We were down 4 with about a minute to go when one of my teammates was forced to shoot an off-balanced shot which missed and was heading out of bounds. I jumped after it saving the ball back to a teammate who drained a 3 as the shot clock wound down. We were now down by one. I guess I should mention that while saving the ball I turned my ankle and had to come out of the game. I walked it off and was back in with about 40 seconds to go. We got a stop on D. We came down on offense and our guard drove the lane dishing it to our big man who made the lay-up to go up by one with 15 seconds to go. We got a stop on the other end to finish the game and win by one point, 85-84. Personally I had a pretty good game. The first half I was frustrated as I missed a few open shots, but the second half I redeemed myself by making several moves to the hole to score later in the 4th quarter. We have two more away games this week on Thursday and Friday.

Food

I really like pasta and pizza, but I literally have it every single day. Don't get me wrong...Italian style pizza is very good, but I think I am going to have to start being more creative and make some other foods if I want to make it through the whole year. The pizzas here are very thin, unlike the traditional American deep dish style. The main meat that Italians have on pizza is prociutto (or ham). I typically get that with pomodorini (small tomatoes). It is very good. Other than that, I will make pasta every night with different types of sauces. At the grocery stores here they have tons of different kinds of cheeses, so it is hard for me to choose which one I want. I typically just guess and go with the trial and error approach.

Game against Milan

We played Milan tonight. We played OK, but we had a bad third quarter so we ended up losing. Milan is a good team in the top league. We have the day off tomorrow which is much needed. The knees are hurting a little, but I guess that is part of the job :) We travel to Switzerland for a Tuesday night game.

Preseason Schedule

We play another preseason game tomorrow night (Friday the 11th of Sep) against Armani from Milan. As most of you know, European teams are sponsored by companies and named after their biggest sponser. In this case it is Armani Jeans. Our next game after that is in Switzerland on Tuesday, which is only about an hour and a half drive away. After that we play a few more Italian teams.

Preseason game against our rivals...Vigevano

We had another preseason game tonight. This time it was against our rivals....Vigevano. They told me prior to the game that the games against this particular team are always crazy and extremely intense. Even though preseason games are called "Friendly Games" and do not count in our record, this game meant a lot to the two sides. It had an atmosphere of a playoff game. Thousands of fans came...both home and away. The opposing team is only about 15 miles away from Pavia so a lot of their fans made the short trip.

European fans are crazy. It was a lot of fun playing in that intense atmosphere. We ended up winning a close game at the end. I played pretty well and scored in the mid-20s. But it definately wasn't an easy game to win. Our team actually had 5 technical fouls including ejections (Don't worry...I didn't get any). It was a tough game to the end, but like I said, we ended up squeezing out the victory. Even though it was a preseason game, their was an awards ceremony to recieve a large cup that these two teams play for each year. I love the extreme fans that we have and I think I will enjoy playing with the adrenaline that they create. It was a lot of fun and it wasn't even a "real" game. I am looking forward to starting the regular season.

We have quite a few more preseason games to go until we hit the season opener on Oct 4th. We travel to a couple countries including Switzerland over the next couple weeks.

Talk to you soon.

First Preseason Game

Well, we had our first preseason game/scrimmage. We played Bologna, Italy. As you can see from the picture it was not an official game. It was closed to the open public and we just wore our practice jerseys. Bologna was one of the better teams in Italy from last season. The game went fairly well. We still have work to do as a team before the season starts. But it felt good to play in a game again. Our team colors are red and black. I think this might be the first time that I have worn black basketball shoes :) (That is me closest to the camera)