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...