"HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA"

Hope everybody is doing well. As I write today we have only two regular season games left, and having won five out of our last six, good enough to get us back to second place in the league standings. In all likelihood this is where we are going to finish heading into playoffs which would be a good position. We'd obviously like to finish first, but regardless we would have home court advantage all the way thru the playoffs (the championship series is at a neutral site). However, like I said there are two games left and we need to finish out on a positive note headed into the playoffs and not have any letdowns.

In the past three weeks I've had a couple decent highlights in my play. Several times last season and a couple this season I had games where I scored in the upper 30's like 39 and 38. I would have gotten to 40 more than once had I just made a couple more free throws in those games. About two weeks ago I finally broke the 40 point barrier as I made my free throws. I'll be honest, it was nice to have a game like that, I ended up with 45 points. I also had another highlight just last weekend as I recorded my first double double in a long time (maybe since high school, I can't even remember). I finished that game with 21 points and 10 assists. It's always enjoyable to play well, I just hope to continue to play well throughout the rest of the season.

Being in Australia, Ben (the other American import) and I don't really have an opportunity to celebrate and enjoy the festivities that accompany July 4th back home in the states. But hey that's alright, cause we organized our own little cookout and get together all the way in Perth, Australia. It was actually hosted by the family that I stay with, who btw are incredible and I'm lucky to have them looking after me, but we had a good crowd show up for burgers, hot dogs, and other things that one might find at a July 4th cookout. There are about 10 or so American players in this league that Ben and I either knew before coming out through Athletes in Action or met competing against each other, so we got most of them to all come enjoy the festivities together. It was a great opportunity to catch up with all these guys off the court and have a "happy birthday America" (as one guy kept saying) party. (Photo of some of the guys above)

Not much other than that, hopefully I'll do a better job updating this site in the coming weeks.

#3

Not a whole lot going on down under other than the normal, basketball, working out, and staying ready for the next ball game. Since the last time I wrote we've had a couple big wins. I think we are back even in the lost column with the two teams ahead of us in the standings. The good thing is that we have the tiebreakers over both those teams. With 8 (I think) games left we are sitting in pretty solid position but we got a tough next three weeks ahead of us. I've continued to play well for the most part. It's slightly different this year, I've continued to garner a lot of attention from opposing teams defenses, but the good thing is that we've had other players step up consistently. There isn't any pressure on me to press or force things. Ben (the other import) has played great all year and can score easily, so between the two of us, and others, we are always capable.

I wrote last time about going to the Fremantle prison to do a tour one Friday night, well Ben, me, and Bobby, who is another American playing for a different team here in Perth, all went down to check it out. Coming from someone who has never been in prison (nope, I don't have anything to hide), it may seem foolish to comment on the condition of such, but this is what we kept calling a "real" prison. It was just insanely primitive. I believe it closed down in 1992, and it would have had no plumbing (inmates were given just a bucket, you can figure out the rest), and there was no real insulation, so in the summer it would have been scorching and would also have gotten very cold at night. Was an interesting night, and like I said a very primitive look at Western Australia's most famous prison.

Also, have had a couple fun nights to head out with some of my teammates to the local casino/resort to watch a couple of the World Cup games, most notably USA and England. Being a member of the English Commonwealth and with lots of English heritage there were a lot of England supporters there. And I mean a lot. I was ridiculously outnumbered (even my teammates were pulling for England). I think I ran into one guy that was from Dallas, but he had had a few too many and was...well we'll just say he was close to seriously angering some English guys, so I had to kind of distance myself from this die hard American supporter cause basically we stood no chance if things got out of hand. I say this cause it was rowdy in the sports book, but it was a great atmosphere. Chants, songs, and cheers all night long. I loved it. We all had a heck of a good time and I suppose it was a good result for the Americans in the game.

Alright hope everybody is well and I'll update after the games this weekend.

2nd Post

Let's see since the last time I posted a blog we have had four games. Lucky for us(well not lucky, well played), we had four wins as well. Prior to these past 2 weeks we only had one weekend where we had back to back games on following days, and a couple times last year when had them they turned out to be easy games for us. This wasn't the case in these past two weeks. These games were serious, all out battles. Guys were getting shoved and thrown all over the place. Just ridiculously physical. A lot of that is due to our opponents. Three out of the four teams had some legit size up and down the roster. I spent a lot of time guarding guys much bigger than me. This has often been the case over these past two seasons as we usually play three guards while others typically play 2 and then a small forward(who isn't so small compared to me at 6'2") but this time it was even more. For three games in a row I was playing guys that had about 5 inches on me and a further 25 plus pounds. With that said tho I think I did a good job and everybody around me did good helping.

Prior to these games we had fallen from top spot in the league after a couple losses. After these four wins (5 in a row overall) we moved back on top of the ladder and defeated the team that had replaced us for a time. So all in all it has been a very good two weeks.

Outside of basketball, there wasn't a whole lot going on. It's getting to be that time of the season where I'm just really trying to stay focused and prepared for the latter half of the season. A lot of my time is left for basketball, and there is nothing wrong with that, just that there isn't anything really different to tell. Am looking forward to only having one game this weekend and hopefully that will leave some time to do something on Friday night. Ben and I have talked about going down to the port city of Fremantle where they have a very old and now non functioning prison. Apparently, there are some really cool tours that can be taken and made more interesting and creepy by doing so at night. That may be something interesting to check out.

Several weeks ago I got to check out the Red Bull Air Race while it was in its Perth stop of the tour. Don't know if you are at all familiar with this, but its acrobatic planes racing thru gates set up along the water. I have seen it on tv several times before from cities all across the world, so I thought it was cool that in was in Perth while I was here. Was definitely a fun afternoon and pretty interesting to see these planes zipping thru these inflatable gates. I think I got some pictures so like at Rottnest I'll try to get some of these up soon.

Alright, hope everybody is enjoying that summer weather on the horizon, know I'm missing that. It's getting a lil cooler here, still very pleasant, but can't go sit on the beach anymore. Take care.

Finally updating in my return trip to Perth

Alright, so it's been a while since I've updated this blog-thing or whatever, being a mixture of laziness, computer problems, and what not....but mostly being lazy and not getting around to it. With that said, I apologize (mainly to my mother who asks me every time I speak with her when I am going to start updating the blog) and am ready to start up again. So, here we go.

I've been in Perth a lil more than three months now and everything has been great. So much has happened since I've been back. It would take me ages to describe all the amazing and fun things that have been going on so I'll just give a couple highlights and then maybe touch on other things from time to time. First, it has been really good to catch up and see all the friends and people that I met last year. Leaving last August, I had made some really good friends and met some very amazing people, but with Australia being on the other side of the world, I didn't know if that would be the last time I saw them or not. To return and see everybody again has been the best experience (as well as meet many new ones).

I've also gotten to visit and experience some different areas around Perth that I didn't get to see last year. It helps to have a second chance to try and get to some places that I missed out on last season. Most notably, Ben, Al, and I made the short boat (ferry) ride over to Rottnest Island a couple months ago....ok I'll stop there for a second. Ben is the other American import from Iowa, a 6'6" post player who is a very good player and even better guy. Even being basically the same age I am, he is someone who I look up to tremendously and has a huge heart for the Lord, a great friend and one that I will keep after I leave. He's been the other half of the piece in pretty much all my excursions to the beach or wherever since I've been here.....Al is the like little brother, the 17 year old son of the family I am staying with (who have been awesome by the way, talk more on that later). Much fun to be around him....alright, so this fairly small island is about 20 km off the coast, so obviously the only way to it is by boat, and people are not allowed to have cars on the island. We went over with this plan to explore the island and do as many things as possible in the day that we were there. Well, that plan was scrapped as soon as we started snorkeling (well we still saw the island, but just snorkeled at different places). It was ridiculous, so much fun. There are lots of coral reefs surrounding the island thus lots of fish and everything.....DID NOT see any sharks tho, very thankful for that, and I was looking.....The water was also clear blue, not kidding. Definitely like something off the Travel Channel. It was all we wanted to do. A shame we never made it back as we got pretty busy and now its too cold to do that, but something I will never forget and just an amazing experience. Hopefully, I can get a couple pictures up here soon.

There has been a lot of stuff going on since I've been here and many other interesting and beautiful sites, but the thing that brought me here, basketball, has also been going on for about 2 months. It's going great. Thinking about it, its amazing to still be playing at a high level and that I'm playing in Australia, so very thankful for that. To top it off, it has once again been a great experience. The team is doing well as am I. We aren't even half way through the season yet, but I'm excited to see where and how far we can go. We got a lot of work to do to win the title again but am confident that we can. For specifics, we are sitting in third place with an 8-3 record, but are tied in the loss column. In reality, the games we lost are ones we shouldn't have but that happens and we just have to learn from them. We have 2 games this weekend that will challenge us once again.

That's all for now. There is a lot to write about and don't think I could do it all. Miss you all. Take care