Jan 12, 2009

Does this mean i'm a local HERO!?!?!

Hello Everyone,

Well this week was filled with some exploring, a mini photo shoot, a full week of practice and some bad weather.

For some reason Morgan was not very entertained by my TV that still only gets 6 stations and 2 of them are the blurry versions of the third. She was not able to perfect the polish language in the short time and she also does not read sign language. Instead of subtitles on the shows they put a picture of a woman in the corner of the TV who signs the whole show. I don’t know if this is because they have many deaf people in Poland that know multiple languages or they don’t teach their deaf to read. So we headed out to see the beautiful town of Kolobrzeg.


We started at the beach and the big lighthouse. It was freezing that day so I bought Morgan one of those furry white caps. If they couldn’t tell we weren’t locals they could now. We walked some of the beach and saw some places even I have not seen yet. Of course we got plenty of pictures. I also showed her downtown where we walked around the small mall and some other little stores.

We ate out for two good dinners, the first at the famous DaVinci Pizza (it has been mentioned 4 times on here). On her last night we went to a really nice place with the team captain and his wife. I don’t know how to spell it, but if you translate it as “the house of the executioner”. It had a medieval theme to the restaurant. I FOUND BEEF! They actually had beef steak there that was very good, along with English menus (you can now imagine how nice this restaurant had to be). The dinner would have been perfect EXCEPT one table of guys. There were 3 men sitting diagonal to us who decided to get plastered (drunk) on a Thursday night dinner. These guys were very obnoxious yelling for the waiter multiple times, one came over and tried to speak French to us, and another guy almost fell into are table when he stood up (not joking). Then he proceeded to go to the restroom, but instead ended up in the kitchen and would not leave it. Thomas (captain) was not very amused and said those are the type of guys that give Poland a bad name.

Many polish fans have found my blog which I think is great. I appreciate all the comments. One polish journalist found it pretty interesting and wanted to do a feature for the magazine he writes for. He wanted to title it “POLAND, Through the Eyes Of A Young American”. He is going to take some things that I have written in my blog along with some of the answers to his questions. He wanted to put some photos of me playing basketball, but also of me in front of my computer. The first photographer he sent came on the wrong day, and woke me up early (9 AM is early for me). He came to my apartment and took some corny pictures of me pointing at the screen and standing outside my apartment. The journalist did not like those as I figured he wouldn’t so he sent another guy (I can’t remember his name so he is the new guy). If you compared the two guys the new guy was like the Kobe Bryant of photography. He took a ton of shots doing many different things, but he used the lighting in unique ways. He also took some photos of me cooking in the kitchen (scrambled eggs) and drinking some of my Kool-aid. I let him try some of my sugar water and he loved it so I gave him a single packet to make at home. It should be pretty cool to see the final product and give me something to take home to the scrap book.

Practice was pretty good all week. Skip is back practicing. He will try out the hand on Sunday. His hand is not 100% healed, but he plays with it taped up. Our big man Dawid turned is ankle for the second time in like 4 weeks and was not able to play. I will have to play some 4 if he is not able to play. We did not have our gym all week because they were having a high school prom there so we had to practice one day at some school. The gym looked alright at first, but when you were running on the floor it felt like it had little pot holes in it. It was a very small gym with some wooden baskets hanging on the side of the gym. One of our younger players “Breniu” decided to dunk on it and ripped the rim down. He is a 6 ft guard so I bet he felt pretty big even though the goal was only 9’6”. I had a pretty good practice in the freezing gym so I guess I don’t have a lot to complain about it, but luckily we thawed out in time for the game.

The Game

We got a big win in the “DERBY” against AZS, our biggest rival. We dominated the whole game starting with Drew’s dunk on the first possession and ending with Kiko’s bank shot. Everyone had a very solid game. I believe we had 5 or 6 players in double figures. The atmosphere was great of course there was a ton of AZS fans, but I was really surprised at the number of Kotwica fans. I know it is close, but it almost seemed as many as we get at home games. They were very loud and cheering the whole game, but of course we gave them something to cheer about since we led the whole game.

Personally, I had a very solid game. I did not score many points (5), but I made my presence felt in other areas. I was 1-2 from 3, 2-4 from foul line (very frustrating), 3 boards, 5 assists (AZS stat keepers robed me of a couple), 2 steals, and 2 big charges. Apparently the announcers said I was the best player on the floor (I felt like this is a big compliment to my game showing I can have an impact other then scoring). I guarded three positions, the point guard some, the three man, and also guarding their best player who is a 4 some as well.

To again illustrate how big a rivalry this is, the police had to escort the bus out of town. We were not even able to stop at pizza hut. I’m not sure if this will show up as a polish scandal not letting us get some of that delicious pan pizza, but it should.

We play 3 more on the road before we get to play at home. We have a better road record then home right now. I think we like playing in packed houses so hopefully we can get a few more fans out the next time we play at home.

•I did not proof read this post so sorry if there are a lot of errors, but then again if I did proof read there would still be errors.

I will leave you with a little quote from a book I was giving as a gift.

“If all I’m remembered for is being a good basketball player, then I’ve done a bad job with the rest of my life”


Until next time!

This is BC gone for now



24 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brandon,

congrats on the big win against your rival!

way to go! :)

Big Al

Anonymous said...

Brandon, very good and CLEVER game!
not many points but 5 asists ! its better than kevin heheh ;)
our team play good
Sefton what shoots for 3 and what a jump when he block :O
Tomasz it is his better game than previous games. 17 points! he is a good capitan.
Kiko next good game, he scored important points !!!
Stelmach better and better he is playing, good balls he gets.
Naymick not many time on the court, but he had the good opponent on his position. 3 blocks!
Mills important points for 1!
Hamilton had 7 rebounds! 3 in attack!

it was beautiful game!
sialalalalala!!!!
peace and good luck!

Anonymous said...

Well done Brandon. I almost lost my voice screaming and singing on this game. It is the best seson even for Kotwica and the whole team are local heroes!!!!

Anonymous said...

I wanted to write: It is the best season ever for Kotwica:)

Anonymous said...

Looving only Kootwicaaa,
for you I give my heaaart,
my only heaart,
I give to my teaam,

Sialala
lalalala (...)


The TV reporters said during the game, that you did extremely great defensive job.


BRANDON CRONE for president!!
Brilliant job!!

Anonymous said...

Brandon Crone silent hero of the game. Brandon Crone our LOCAL HERO!!!
wonderfull game BC, great job in defense. Wish you luck next game.

PS

Anonymous said...

first of all: YES, YOU ARE A LOCAL HERO!

next game is in Poznań - you will have my support, as my university is there. There will also be about 20 other people cheering for you, so we expect another great game.

If you want to try out some new food I can tell you that there are a lot of nice places to eat here. Let me recomend two of them:

"dramat" in stary rynek, the best pancaces in the world (with some meat fillings and garlic soauce, delicious!) but they are only open during the day, cause in the night they are a pub.

the other place is

"brovaria" a place where every meal is somehow combined with beer, for example instead of water they use beer to boil it. very popular, but loud place. also in stary rynek.

and again thank you for beating AZS!

eM

Anonymous said...

Well done :)

AZS KISS MY ASS !!

Anonymous said...

Hi champ! Thank you for outstanding game!
You exerted a great influence on Guys from TV. They had noticed that only YOU were able to stop G.Reese (big charge) knowing that he likes to make his run to the line :D
You've been playing in Kotwica for few months now and you have already met all league teams on the court.
I wonder if you could write something about our TEAM and our PLK league in comparison with your past teams and leagues.
Your fresh look shall be very interesting for all of us.

-o|--) anchor forever ;)

moff

SADO said...

Kotwica-AZShttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq1PWlpTmFU&feature=related

Lech-Legia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIYRUrFD7Uw&NR=1

Anonymous said...

I think that's good idea, please write something about polish basketball league. That will be something interesting for us, how you see our league. And write something about fans you met during the game in poland, how they are cheering, it's the same cheering like in ncaa or sweden? You've written that polish fans yelling too much on the game, how do you feel then, is it positive feeling, or you hate it?

You dropped the anchor on AZS players, they were too slow for you ;) :) :D googd job

PS

Anonymous said...

Thanks for great game!!!
More games like this one.


If you like good meal you have to go to in Kołobrzeg:
steak - beef - "Grill House "

http://www.zumi.pl/101681,Grill_House._Dawid_Wichlacz__Lukasz_Wichlacz,Kolobrzeg,firma.html

Anonymous said...

Brandon are there any injuries in the team??Dawid only played for few minutes??

Anonymous said...

"Our big man Dawid turned is ankle for the second time in like 4 weeks and was not able to play."

Anonymous said...

Great game!!

thanks Brandon, from your blog i finally know that my funkction in team is called in english "stats keeper" :)
We will give you back these some assist in our next home game ;)

Stats keeper from Milenium

Anonymous said...

watched the game on youtube (I can watch it all day, love it!) couted your assists. 5 was my count (I'm not from koszalin:) )

Anonymous said...

Brandon, whole game in parts!

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=m4XEVA0DgpA

Anonymous said...

Thank you for AZS! That was fantastic game!

And another question: what you know about Ron Paul?

Anonymous said...

http://www.polskikosz.pl/zdjecie.php?id_zdjecie=16202

PS

SADO said...

haha another great game Brandon. I was there and i think you were best. Playing hard in defence and picking up hard shots. Just keep your form like now and i think you will be good. You are making progress game after game.

Anonymous said...

We was in Poznan also. You are great defensor :) I almost lost my voice screaming....

Anonymous said...

how could you be so cool makig that free throws in the end? FANTASTIC!

eM

Anonymous said...

Brandon, because of lack of concentration we almost lost it......thank God you didnt miss those free throws...We want a MEDAL!!!!!!!!!!we believe!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Free throws?! In Poznań no more frustrating ;)
Go on Brandon! Good luck!