Sunday, March 29, 2009

First Loss

Alright, so we've lost our first game of the season. We didn't just lose either, we got smoked. Saturday night saw us make a 5 hour bus trip to a town up north on the coast called Geraldton, get smacked around then have to make the trip home in the middle of the night. Not fun. The opposing team exposed all the weaknesses and faults that I have talked about in earlier posts. It's just that they were good enough to punish us, and I mean punish us. However, we didn't play well and were missing an important player. They are better than us right now, but I know they are not 35 points better. It will provide us a good opportunity to see what areas we need to improve drastically in order to be around come the end of playoff time. As for me I feel I had a decent game. I just had to work extremely hard for whatever I got. There weren't many easy looks in this game. Think I finished with 23 points. 

All and all, minus the past game, everything in general is still going well for me. It is a good and fun group of teammates and I'm still enjoying everything about Australia. I haven't had much time to see much of anything that I assume would be considered very exciting lately, but again its still enjoyable. A couple days ago, Jason and I went with a couple teammates to go eat and hang out a lil bit at a restaurant that was right on the beach. It was a good time. There was good food, a  live band playing, and then a clear day with the sun setting over the ocean. Made for a very relaxing and neat evening. So, basically I'm still not homesick. 

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Lightning 3-0

This past Friday night we had another game at home. During the week leading up to the game, most of the fans I ran into kept saying that we should have a pretty easy time with the team we were playing. It was far from that. It was a tough and physical game. We seemed to be a little shocked and were down at halftime. In the second half we came out with more energy and a sense of urgency and ended up pulling away and winning by about 10 or 11. I played a fairly good game. I believe I finished with 22 points, but I struggled in the second half. I think part of the problem was that I got tired. That's something I'm still working on and need to improve, my endurance. The game can get fairly lengthly with a 24 second shot clock and 48 minute game. In this game I played 44 minutes. That's a good deal more than I ever played in college on a given night. 

Our next game is this Saturday. We have to make about a 5 hour bus ride up north to play apparently a very tough team. It's going to be a real challenge for us. We are going to be without one of our top inside players and the consistent league leader in rebounds every year (also didn't have him this past Friday). That will give them a significant advantage. That's ok tho, I'm looking forward to it. It's traditionally a testy contest and will provide us good assessment of where we are against the rest of the better teams in the league. 

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Lakeside Lightning 2-0

Well we finally had a real game this past weekend, actually two. The first game was a home game on Friday night. I'll start off by talking about the atmosphere at our stadium/gym. Our home games are played at a rec center (Lakeside Rec Centre). The main court has one side of stadium seating, probably 20 rows high and the length of the court (not as big as the seat side at Upstate). On game days a removable grandstand is put up on the court adjacent to the main one, so this gives a little bit of extra seating. Obviously, it's not a very big arena, but once the game got started the atmosphere was very good. I was impressed actually. Very loud and involved crowd, and I noticed that it was just standing room only. We played a team that would probably be about 25 minutes away called the Eastern Suns. Throughout the game it was very close and I don't believe either team led by more than double digit points at anytime. We ended up winning 93-90 as the Suns hit two three pointers with under 20 seconds left to make it even more interesting. Some thoughts on the game; this was my first experience with a longer game (games are four 12 minute quarters) and the 24 second shot clock. The biggest thing I think this does is obviously lengthens the game, and the game is played at a faster pace than the college ball I'm accustomed to. The funny thing tho, is that we played at such a fast pace anyways the shot clock didn't even matter. Speaking of the length of the game, I think this had an effect on several of the players including myself. There were three or four of our players who had trouble with muscle cramping. Keep in mind that it is also summer at the moment here, and even tho it's not 90 degrees at night (like many daytimes) it is still pretty hot in the gym. Interestingly enough, I still managed to play about 40 minutes. With regards to team play a lot of times we took seemingly ill advised shots or tried to force plays. Some of this is probably that it was the first game, the team we played was pretty good, and also this doesn't really bother Andy (coach). I think we'll get a better feel of the offense that we run and improve in these areas, but overall I think we did pretty good job anyways. Always helps to start with a win anyways. As for me, I think I played a pretty good game. I didn't shoot the ball particularly well but finished with 19 points and feel it was a good start. 

Our next game was less than 24 hours later against a team called Perth Redbacks. This was an away game but here in the city of Perth, so didn't take but about 20 minutes to get to the facility. After a physically difficult game the night before, it was quite nice to have an easier game. We won this one easily with a score of 120-85. The game was actually about a 10 point game late in the second quarter but we went on a 24-3 scoring run and never looked back. This team wasn't as good as the one the night before, but we still did a better job offensively and got whatever we wanted. I am a little concerned about our team defensively, it was even visible in a game like this. It could come back and haunt us against a better team. Once in the half court I think there are some deficiencies especially guarding screens and such. However, this doesn't really surprise me as we don't do any defensive breakdown drills in practice. Whatever tho, seems pretty apparent we are going to try and outscore people. I had a very good shooting game and finished with 38 points and 7 threes. Hopefully, the team and I will be able to continue to play well and win in the upcoming weeks. Our next game is at home this Friday night. 

Friday, March 13, 2009

Few Pictures



I'll eventually get some more up. But just one of the city at dusk, Natalie, Jason, and I at the football game, and Jason, Chris (teammate), and myself out one night.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

AFL or "Footie" Game


Well the big event this weekend for me, being American, was going to an Australian rules football game on Saturday. Otherwise, known as the Australian Football League or simply "footie". I would classify it as a combination of rugby and maybe American football. However, this football is almost non stop running and contact and the players wear no pads. There isn't any really stoppage of play like in America after a play is run and everybody has to go back to their respective huddles. AFL is non stop until somebody scores. Basically, teams score by kicking a rugby like ball thru two uprights which are on different ends of the fields. Besides the roughness, I guess this is the only similarity to American football. If more information is wanted about this game I'll leave it up to you to Google it, but basically the ball can be moved up or down the field by either: A. running the ball, B. A underhand like pass to other players, or C. kicking the ball to players. All this is done while guys are trying to tackle the ball carrier. And yes, this is a very physical game. I saw numerous hard collision, but the worst would have to be the constant knees to the kidneys that players receive when jumping up to catch the ball. It was very interesting to watch. I went to the game along with Jason and the female import Natalie. The teams we saw are the only AFL teams in Western Australia and are both in Perth (well one is Fremantle, basically Perth), so its a little bit of an understatement to say that these teams are rivals. AFL is the most popular sport in Australia and is one of the first things we learned about when we touched down in Australia. So the fans of these teams are just a little hardcore. Very fun to watch and observe tho. I look forward to hopefully being able to go back and watch another one.

Our first basketball games are this weekend. One on Friday and Saturday. I'm very excited to finally get to play a game. I really don't know what to expect from the other teams or competition so it's going to be interesting to see what the weekend holds. I'm just glad to finally have the opportunity to play. First game as a professional basketball player. Kind of fun to say. So I'll have to give an update ASAP after the games this weekend to let you know how it went, and I'm also going to hunt the website that carries the results and such (I know its out there). Talk soon.