Not the start I wanted

Hello Everyone,

I am officially back overseas. I had a great flight over, there were no delays and I had a whole row to myself. I had to wait a little bit at the airport for my ride, but it was nothing to sweat over. There were some traces of snow still on the ground and I was glad I came prepared with hat and gloves that I bought before I left.

My time at home was very enjoyable. I squeezed a lot into only twelve days. I spent a night in Monon with the grandparents, made it to St. Louis for two days, watched the first game of the season for Butler (which they coasted by and Ball State was not very good), Hung out with some old friends at Broad ripple, Watched American Gangster with the folks, met with some people for the Three on Three classic, and the list could keep going. I am not sure why I feel the need to put everything down, but it might be to validate to myself that I did get a lot accomplished. It is kind of weird knowing I won’t be home for 6 months while missing Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. This will mark the first time I have not been home for all three. I guess it is just me growing up, but I will miss not being with the family. Morgan has booked her ticket to come over on the 26th of December and will be here for two weeks which I’m excited about. Hopefully, I will have my apartment by then.

There has been some complication with me getting an apartment. I knew they were not going to have one right away. The team originally thought another player would not be coming until January. They have found one that is unfurnished, and the GM’s daughter who is staying in the team apartment is moving to the unfurnished one and then I will move into the team one. I have been staying at the same hostel I was in on my last visit to Sodertalje. It is not that big of deal, but I do not have a TV or any way to watch movies right now. Also there is no internet connection so I have to come up to the gym or teammates apartment. The food think is hard as well because people in the hostel seem to eat or drink all your food. I have been having a lot of Pasta and oatmeal. We get lunch five days a week so that helps out a lot. I have been doing a lot of reading and just finished my second Dan Brown book. I really like this author, but I have not read his most famous book “Da Vinci Code”. Hopefully, I will be moved in by this coming weekend so I can do more important things like playing Playstation 3.

The Team

We had a light shooting practice the first day I was here which was good to get my legs up and moving again from the long flight. We then had three hard practices before the game on Sunday. I was not in as good of shape as I thought I was, but I think jet lag played a little part in keeping me winded. The team practices really hard, but it seems to not translate in the game.

We got beat by 14 points in my first game here (not the way you want to start). I can give you just a few stats and it should tell you how the game was. We shot 37 threes and went to the free throw line 8 times. They shot 18 threes and went to the line 47 times. I really hate blaming the refs and they were not fully to blame this game at all (they did not help either). During practices the players attack one another pretty hard even getting in little arguments, but in the game it is like they are scared of the opponent. We did not attack the team at all and they had no inside presence at all. They had 3 guards and 1 small forward who scored basically all their points. We will definitely need to attack teams a lot more or will be a long season. Personally I did not play very well for my first game. I was 1-4 from three (one was a desperation NBA three with shot clock low), 2-5 from two. I got hit pretty hard on two of them but there was no call. I was able to get 2 steals and a couple boards. I lost my wind pretty quickly in the first half. This will be an adjustment for a while as we are waiting for our center to come in the middle of December. I am playing a lot of post up and back to the basket here. I’m not very comfortable with this and picked up a charge in the game. I think in the long run it will only help and strengthen my game so I’m going to attack the challenge. We play Friday and then again on Tuesday both away (this week should go by pretty quickly).

Resources:
www.Eurobasket.com – drop down menu at the top, go down to Sweden and they usually have recaps of all the games.
http://www.sbbk.se/ - team website that has live game stats
This is BC gone for now