Basketball

Loving Indy

2011-03-14T17:28:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Got pretty lazy with the blog updates! Not sure anyone even looks at this anymore,but in case a few do, a real quick up date!

Morgan and I are back in INDY, and I'm coaching over at Park Tudor! We are playing in Semi-state this coming weekend then hopefully off to the state championship game!

I'm still looking for a college coaching job which hopefully I will get a chance this summer!

Until next time!

Looking for a Job!

2010-09-08T00:49:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well The market has not been extremly good to me latley. Like I stated in the last post I am on the job hunt with nothing coming up. I can't say it is linked to lack of trying because I have been sending the resume out every where. I have been trying to get my foot in the door with an entry level DOBO (director of basketball operations) position. As I wait for something to shake loose in the basketball world, I have been spending a lot of time in the Emergency Department.

I have been working with Washington University looking for study participants in the Emergency department. The 8 hours consist of me looking at a computer (the medical board) for older adults who have fallen. I can't say it is my dream job, but it keeps me doing something for the time being.

My Mother, Step-father, and brother visited Morgan and I over Labor day weekend. The trip was really nice even though it did not go as planned. We had tried to go to grant's farm which is where the founders of -Bush lived. The wait to get in was going to be way to long. We did however get to tour the Anheuser-Bush factory which is a nice tour. The famous BBQ place I wanted to take them to also had a very long wait to it. We had to settle for a local brewery restaurant.

That's the update and if anyone has any job leads for me please let me know!!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

I guess the honeymoon is comming to an end?!

2010-08-11T07:08:00.005+02:00

Hello Everyone,

It has been a very interesting and unbelievable summer. I would have to categorize this as one of the best ever. I’m not even sure how to type about everything.
I guess I could start with my bachelor party in Vegas. Where 14 of us stayed in a $9,000 a night Penthouse (just so happened to be the same one Mariah Carey stayed in the week before.) It came complete with a pool table, 4 flat screen tv’s, and a hot tub on the balcony (only the 58th floor). I guess I should add that everyone only paid $200 total for two nights! Some of you might find this a little boring so I will move on.

I followed that trip up with my first visit to Wrigley Field. A former teammate of mine at Butler University was getting married in June and had his bachelor party in Chicago.10 hotdogs and who knows how many beers later, I was about to have the night to forget or remember depending on how you look at it. After watching the Cubs get killed by the cardinals from our rooftop tickets I Preceded to lose my credit card, my sunglasses, and had the biggest Margarita bowl I had ever seen for my birthday that was still 3 weeks away. Follow all that with a 2 AM cab ride where the taxi driver decided to show me every part of Chi town except the part where I was staying. Those two trips together made me lay pretty low until my wedding.

I wish I could tell you some unbelievable details or stories from my wedding, but it all when by so fast. I must say I had an unbelievable time visiting with friends and family. Everyone seemed to love the all you could eat pizza, sliders, and Paradise Café cookies. That is everyone except for me since I maybe got one each. Many commented on the relax atmosphere and us not having many traditional wedding things (like a CAKE). Of course you can’t have a wedding without a honeymoon.

We went to Hermitage Bay Antigua for our honeymoon. It was an amazing resort that was part jungle part beach. My man Carlton hooked us up for the 7 days with plenty of good food and drinks. Our room was on the side of the mountain with our own infinity pool overlooking the ocean. The downside to the resort was it was almost too relaxing, I needed a little more action. The bugs weren’t the best either.

Now that you are pretty much caught up on my summer of a lifetime I will give you the current dirt. I have a couple more weddings to attend before the summer is completely over, one being my oldest brother Loren’s. I have been working on the best man speech and I hope it turns out alright.

I have been working two part time jobs in St. Louis with Washington University. I have been trying to nab a job in the sports field, mainly looking for coaching jobs. The market for that is about as bad as the market for a versatile swing player. I have not had many looks to play again overseas. I’m kind of at a crossroads where I’m ready to give up playing, but nothing is on the other side of that yet.
Hopefully this quick recap gives you enough to naw on for the time being. The next report will hopefully have me back overseas with a good job or in the USA coaching some young kids on the game of basketball!

I almost forgot to tell you about the new edition to the newly formed Crone family. That is our lovely Great dane puppy RIZZO! who gets bigger by the day!
Until next time,
This is BC gone for now

Finally settling down!!

2010-04-19T03:07:00.003+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well I have finally had a chance to sit down and finally write a little bit. It has been pretty crazy couple of weeks with, the quick exit of the kings from playoffs, Butler playing for the national championship, trying to visit with all the family and friends, and moving to St. Louis.

I guess I need to touch on the playoff loss in Sweden. The season ended so quickly. We won the first game of playoffs in Solna pretty decisively and then we never won another game. We ran up against a team that was playing and shooting unbelievably. They had a lot of veterans and they used their experience and we just didn’t have enough fire power to stay with them. We played one bad game, but we had trouble scoring all series. It was a little weird sitting in the locker room after the last loss realizing it was all over. We had hopes of going farther especially riding the 8 game win streak into playoffs, and then it was all over! I really only had 2 good games out of four! Ironically the first and the last which were both also on TV! I really didn’t shoot well all series, but was somewhat effective in other areas. I defiantly wish we had a better series and a different ending (with us winning), but it did open up another opportunity for me to experience another unique and unbelievable event.

If you didn’t know by now that my alma-matter Butler University played for the National Championship in basketball. Since we lost my coach and team made an unbelievable effort to get me home for it. Since they made that effort and got me home I didn’t have a chance to give proper goodbyes or thank you to many of the people involved with the club. So I guess if any of them read this I would like to THANK YOU. I have had two really good seasons in Sodertalje and have met some really good people. The thing above all else is I also got paid (HAHA).

Man I’m not even sure I can put in words how awesome it was for Butler to play in our hometown of Indianapolis for the CHAMPIONSHIP. So many people have come through the program giving time and effort along with sweat and tears. To see all that accumulate into playing for the title was just surreal. I was able to visit and hang out with many former players during the whole weekend. The Butler University program is such a small family and full of such good people that it made this event even more enjoyable. They had a brunch for alumni which were free for past players. The food was excellent and my former coach Todd Lickliter gave a very good speech. They had all former players go down and talk with the team before they played MSU. It was a surprise for all. We took a group photo and Coach Stevens gave a quick speech.

One of the coolest moments for me was that both my mother and father got to attend the event as well. My mom went to Saturday’s game while my father went to the national championship game. Although I wish the result for the game was different here as well, but the pathway that this group Butler Bulldogs players just opened up is remarkable.

I have moved to St. Louis with my fiancee before our wedding in June. I am hoping to meet with some of the college coaches here and possibly opening up a position of some kind even if it is volunteer. Morgan has a job that she loves until at least September. So I have a couple of months to see what happens here in St. Louis. We have a nice 2 bedroom apartment about 5 minutes of downtown and right by forest park. It is in a great location if only it could be Indianapolis!!!

I Guess this is the last blog update until after the honeymoon!!! Going to be a great summer with Kentucky derby, Las Vegas, cubs rooftop tickets, couple of other weddings to attend, plus my OWN WEDDING (AND HONEYMOON)!!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Crazy Time

2010-04-05T03:30:00.002+02:00

It has been a very crazy time with Butler in the national championship and the bad end to the season in Sweden! I will be touching on all these areas next week when i get a minute to stop and put all the thoughts and experiences down!!

Going for GOLD!

2010-03-21T20:35:00.001+01:00

Hello Everyone,

We finished off the season right with another 2 wins, running our current win streak to 8 games. We also secured 5th place for the playoffs which should set up a nice matchup for us in the playoffs.I had two more strong games and am going into the playoffs with a lot of confidence. Playoffs start on Tuesday for us in Stockholm against Solna. I must say I’m pretty excited as this will be my first playoff series as a professional. The first year I got injured 3 weeks before them and last year of course we left early due to the money situation.

The solna series will not be an easy one as they have two really good guards that can hit shots from anywhere at any time, and they also have two big guys that try and control the boards. It is a best of five series rotating away-home every game. Hopefully we can get off to a great start and steal the first one on Tuesday.

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

We will have the six pack please.... OF WINS!

2010-03-14T20:41:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

It has been a nice couple of weeks. Of course 6 wins in a row will help that out, but the sun has been shining a lot. Spring fever is creeping in on me. I have been told that it has hit the 60’s a couple times at home. We have not been that lucky yet, but we have hit 41 degrees. Even with about 7 days of straight sunshine we still have 3 or 4 inches of snow left on the ground. I guess it is more like ice now as it melts during the day and refreezes at night. The walk to the gym has become about 100 times more dangerous with all the black ice.

Both games were on the road this week, one in Stockholm and the other in Sundsvall. 08 which is the team name in Stockholm was a big game for us not because of the standings, but because how bad they embarrassed us on national TV and at home the last time (Minus Will, Boka, and myself). It was more of a pride game where we really wanted to beat them, but not act like jackasses in the process. The game was back and forth and we really did not play all that well in the first half and we broke it open in the second half after a big play. I would say it was probably my best defensive play of the year. I knocked the ball away from the guy and as we were both chasing after it he had a step on me and was blocking me off. So I dove under him and was able to come up with the ball after it rolled to the corner on our offensive end, I then passed it to our center who scored and got an and 1! After that they received a technical foul and it ended up being about a 7 point swing. I finished the game with 17 points,6 boards, and 4 steals along with a couple more dives!!! The win knocked them out of having a chance of making the playoffs which I cannot say that I am to sad about. I received player of the game which came with 6 coupons for a free sub at subway. The only problem is they would not accept them in the subway in Sodertalje. Might have to bring them back to the states and try them since they are in English!

The second game was in Sundsvall which was about a 3 in a half hour train ride. When we arrived in Sundsvall we ate at the railway saloon right next to the train station. It was an old western theme restaurant that had American and Texas flags hanging up all over. Budweiser boxes and animal heads also lined the walls. For a minute it felt like I had just walked into a Texas roadhouse back at home. The food was really good, but the game was even better.

The game was similar to the 08 where it was back and forth in the first half and we were down 3 at half. I had my best half of the season scoring 20 in the first half. We picked up the pressure in the second really playing good defense and causing them to have a ton of turnovers. I finished the game with 25 and 4 assists. We got a very big road win which keeps us in the running for fifth place. They have a player on their team that played with me last time I was here, so we went and visited with him and his family after the game.

We finish the season this week with one home game and one away game. The home game is against Gothia which will determine 5th and 6th place. The other one is in jamtland which may not have a lot riding on the game so some of us may not sit. We will be gearing up for playoffs the following week.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Currenst Streak

2010-03-08T13:32:00.002+01:00

So I was a little occupied doing the dishes that I forgot the blog!! Need my mother here again to keep me on track!!

We are currently on a 4 game win streak with 4 games left!!

We are fighting for 5th and 6th place in the playoffs which start in two weeks!!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now!

10 Days with my son!!

2010-02-28T20:42:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

So I thought I would give my mother a chance to tell her story of the 10 days here and what she experienced or thought. It is one thing when you are just out of college and your mind is open to anything, but my mother is 50 and has never left the USA (Bahamas doesn’t count). I figure you are pretty set in your ways and comforts by that age. So everything she saw here was probably a bit different for her. Even though Sweden is a pretty easy country to adjust to, I have no idea what she would have done in Poland or Hungary, it can still be different. She now has her STAMP and here are her thoughts!!!!!

Well I am sure this won’t be as good as Brandon’s but he is insisting I share my visit with him on here for a “different “perspective! So here it goes…..
My flight was nonstop from Chicago which was great, BUT Brandon was over an hour late to pick me up due to traffic and weather:( I was super happy to see him and for once I did the right thing and did not panic and stayed in one place so he could find me easily. Weird though because I had no use of a cell, no one to call so really what if he was hours late??? Good news is I made it and have had an awesome 10 days here. Luckily guys, especially my 3 boys seem to be very low maintenance so my time has been very relaxing.

The highlight of my trip of course was getting to see 3 games while I was here, two at home and one about a 4.5 hour bus ride away. (More on that later) They lost the first game in overtime to the #2 team in the league, I could go on and on about the details but let me just say it never should have been an overtime game to begin with, DANG! The away game was great, they played really well especially Brandon. He had a great game. I was their only fan there so it was kinda funny cheering and whistling by myself. B had 22pts, 6 boards 6 steals and 2 assists. They won the last game on Saturday as well and they currently sit in 6th place for the playoffs with 6 games remaining. I LOVED getting to know his team. I watch most the games on the internet and now I will know exactly who is doing what and what is going on for the most part.

Their coach is VERY intense, which is good. All the guys speak English which was great however they all have their own version and it can be very funny at times. I think Boka might be the best:) The bus ride was typical except we watched Forgetting Sara Marshall, (actually saw 4 movies in all) a very funny movie with some pretty vivid sex scenes, it was funny but the thing that I laughed hardest at was all the guys laughing and his Coach who couldn’t stop laughing. We passed where we were supposed to stop and eat pre- game meal from on the way there. We stopped at some random place which happened to be right on the 2nd largest lake in Sweden. It was beautiful.

Speaking of food, I can’t leave that out because that is usually the highlight of B’s blog right? B took me to a Greek place the first night and although I don’t really know what it was called, I had lamb and rice. It was excellent. After the game Saturday we went to a place downtown and ate what they call a kebab (no meat on a stick though, how weird is that) and it was meat on top of fries with a small salad on the same plate and this orange sauce over all of it. It too was actually excellent. I will say these are not things I would normally try. We went to the grocery, interesting, I couldn’t figure anything out really but fortunately Brandon was and pro got everything we needed and we ate at home most of the time. His favorite was not really the food, just the fact that it would be ready for him after pracitce and the biggest thing NO dishes.

We went to Stockholm, one day then to a Harley Davidson store another day (it was closed for inventory) then back to the Harley store again when it was open. They were closed the first day and had no signs on the door or anything. It was weird because a lot of people were trying to go in. I don’t think you would see that in the states. We watched a movie every night but one, played lots of monopoly cards (yes I got my butt kicked) but he has lots more practice! We also stayed up WAY past my bedtime if I was home. That will be an adjustment going home and having to get up and get ready again. B usually stays up till 1 and I didn’t want to go to bed before him so I rolled with it. He was pretty shocked when I slept in until 11. He has never seen that before.

Things I will say I noticed here: Never any ice anywhere, smallest glasses no matter what you drink, NO such thing as Diet Pepsi (did have Pepsi & Pepsi max). Tons of people walk everywhere here so in turn you see very few “heavy” people. With that said the jeans look like they are painted on, or they were leggings with sweaters over them and boots. I have no idea how they don’t freeze to death but tons of gals wear them freezing or not. Lots and lots of smokers and they start really young here. Most people here speak English when you tell them that’s all you speak. This is the most snow they have had here since 1985 so they really struggle with clearing roads and parking lots. They are not big on shopping hours, lots of stores close really early, they don’t seem to have much going on after 7pm.

What I loved the most was spending time with my son who is just a few months away from getting married. Life changes, kids grow up and make you really proud and you learn that it’s okay to trust them when you’re on their turf and just roll with it:)

Until Next Time!

This is Mother gone for now

Chinese anyone?!

2010-02-14T18:09:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,
The biggest thing I learned this week was not to go to a Chinese buffet in Sodertalje. I say this for a couple reasons, but surprisingly not because how the food tasted. They had a Mongolia grill which actually would have been alright if I didn’t put like 5 scoops of Szechwan sauce. I guess that sauce is pretty hot and the Swedish sign said you only need half a spoon full (I have not learned to read Swedish yet). They did have sweet and sour chicken, but I have never been a huge fan of that plus I couldn’t taste it after burning every one of my taste buds off. I couldn’t find any of my favorites like chicken & Broccoli, General Tso’s, cooked crab meat, and the many others. The selection was very weak for a buffet compared to the buffets I come from. After all that it still wasn’t the worst part, the worst part was the bill. 170 Krowns was the damage which is like $24(that included the one glass of coke that was like $3 and no refills). I know you are now thinking to yourself “Brandon you play a game for a living you can pay $24 for a meal” and that is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean I have to be happy about doing it. The funniest part about the evening was the reaction from our center (Boka) when he heard the price. He thought he said 117 so of course he gave him 120. The guy just kept looking at him, and then printed out the receipt that said 170. Boka looked at it and had a 5 year old reaction of “DAMN! I will never be eating at this place again”. I guess a 5 yr old wouldn’t cuss yet so we will say 7 yr old! There growing up so fast these days!

Some of us attended the karaoke bar on Wednesday night, where I took part in singing two songs. I have never sung karaoke before I came here this year. I must say I kind of like it, but that is probably because I’m surrounded by people that don’t speak my language and I will never see again. I sang the two songs with a teammate, summer of 69, and 99 red balloons! Some other songs of the night from the teammates were; purple rain, sexual feeling, hero, Maria Maria, and they also sang a Brittany song that made for a good laugh.

We only had one game this week against the top team which we lost. I did not play in the game as my knee was acting up again and since we were having this long break after Tuesday’s game we decided it would be smarter to try and get it 100% as we will be making a final push for playoffs with 9 games remaining. We are currently in 7th place and are looking good to finish in 6th or maybe even 5th place.

We had the entire weekend off of basketball to re energize for that final push. Some of us decided to go into Stockholm and see something different. It was a nice change of scenario and I think much needed. I will hopefully begin practicing again on Monday and have the week to prepare for plannja which will be a tough test. My mother will be in the stands for the first time in like 3 years so that will be pretty exciting as long as she doesn’t yell for me to bend my knees on the free throw line;)

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

2010-02-07T14:37:00.002+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well it has been a couple weeks since the last post and I must say they were not the best couple of weeks. It has been a little frustrating as I have been battling a sickness, trying to get the knee to 100% and we lost 3 out of 4 games. There is a little good news that I played in the last 2 games meaning the knee was not as injured as we once thought. The MRI came back showing only a bone bruise and minimal cartilage damage. After hearing that news I have been rehabbing and trying hard to get it back to 100%. I will start swimming this weekend to keep up with conditioning and try to stay off it as much as possible.

Even though we lost 3 out of the last 4 we still find ourselves in 6th place with 10 games remaining. It would have been nice to get a couple wins though as we played 3 out of the 4 at home. We also lost an important game to Gothia who right now holds the tie breaker with us. We see them one more time so if we can get that one it will become a points system. We are still eagerly awaiting the return of our injured center that will help us match up better with a lot of teams. Like I mentioned earlier I have played in the last two games, but not without some pain and it only being at 80%. We play one more game on Tuesday against the top team in the league then we get a 12 day break which should be huge for us to all get healthy again.

This is usually the time when I start missing home a little bit. We get in a normal routine and not a lot is happing. I am really excited for my mother who will be coming next week. She has never been out of the country before and I think she is a little nervous. It will be a wonderful experience for her. I’m just hoping some of this snow melts away so the touring will be a little easier. I’m trying to think of a menu for her and I while she is here! We will have to go exotic sense neither one of us are picky.

hoped you enjoyed the no action photo shots to go with the no action blog post!!

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Take the good with the BAD!

2010-01-24T19:42:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

This week featured a PR visit to a school and a huge road game at Uppsala! The schools here are pretty relaxed. The school was like an elementary and middle school combined. When we first arrived there were young kids sledding down the icy hill. Right next to the brick building and metal bike racks. They did have helmets on so I guess they were kind of safe. I took a turn down the hill and it was rather fun. I’m pretty cautious after my incident back in high school (long story short I tore cartilage sledding down a 2 foot hill). Another example of how relaxed the school was over half of the students were walking the halls, while the other half had headphones in their ears. I guess it has been a while since I was in elementary and middle school, but BACK IN MY DAY that would have never went down!

We spoke to three classes and handed out tickets to the Tuesdays TV game. That is a huge game for the club as the TV station will decide if they will air any other games in Sodertalje based on the crowd. We also stayed around the school for a while signing autographs for the kids. I really enjoy that part of the job. I am pretty good with kids and enjoy them most likely due to all my little siblings. Although there was one kid that kept trying to steal all my tickets and I did want to slap him, but I figured that would be hard to explain to the club why I was in a Swedish jail after a PR trip.

The game in Uppsala was for fifth place in the league. The game was going to be extra tough without our center. I mean we are not that tall of a team anyway, our center is only 6’7” which is not very big in basketball. He is the only player we have that really likes to play with his back to the basket. It defiantly was not our best game played. We were really bad on defense, but luckily for us Uppsala did not play much better either. It was another one of those games where the refs stopped play every 5 seconds. I even picked up an intentional foul when I stripped a guy. We played much better in the second half and won by 12 or something. I had a very solid game scoring 23, and grabbing 11 rebounds with 5 assist and a steal, but it came with a price.

I ruptured a ligament in my knee. Not one of the big ones like the ACL or MCL but some other CL (don’t really know if there are any other CL’s). Anyway it looks like I will be out anywhere between 1-4 weeks which would be 3 or 4 games. It will now make it extremely tough on the team as we have lost 60 mins a game, 35-40 points a game, and 15-20 rebounds a game with the center and I out. The good thing is we have the players that can come in and step up. This could also benefit us during playoffs having a really deep bench. I seem to be a little cursed here in Sodertalje with injuries. I have had more injuries playing in this town then I have had in the previous 7 years. I am staying positive however as we have worked our way into playoff position and just need to maintain. When you play a sport for a living you know there is always a risk of injury. I just really hope I am back on the court when my mother flies over in February as that was one of the main motivators to see me play again.

I will have more time to keep perfecting my art of cooking..

In case you are wondering it is eggs with spinach and onion, bacon, cheesy potatoes, toast with jelly, pineapple juice and of course no meal is complete without the Heinz bottle!

I really just felt like bragging on myself!

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

All BALL!!

2010-01-17T20:47:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,

This blog is all about Ball! It was a very good week for the kings as we won two this week pushing our win streak to 3. We won on the road against a team that is in front of us by one game. The other one we won at home to the fourth place team in the league.

Tuesday was the away game about two hours from here. We hopped on the big bus and watched Napoleon Dynamite (a MTV movie if you have not heard of it). Coach was not very fond of the movie and threatened to run the guy who brought it if we did not win. I’m not saying that is why we won, but it did add some extra incentive. The game started very evenly with us trading baskets and going into the locker room with a 1 point lead. The second half was totally dominated by us and we ran away with the game winning by 19. I had another solid game scoring 19, with 8 boards and 4 steals.
Saturday was a home game against Solna. We promoted the game on Friday handing out free tickets at Astra Zeneca (the big pharmacy company) as attendance has been the worst they have seen in many years. Hopefully with the great showing we had we can bring some people back. The game started out very similar to the one on Tuesday with us trading baskets and going to the locker room up 1. Then in the third quarter we ran away with the game and ending up winning by 29! Again I had another decent game scoring 17, 5 boards and 3 steals.

When we play defense like we can and control the boards I think we can play with any team in this league. We also are a much more balanced team with 5 to 6 guys scoring in double digits every night. We did have an injury to our center on Saturday and he will most likely miss one game. We have a big game on Friday away against Uppsala. If we can win that game then we will be in 5th place which would be the highest we have been.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

PC270050.AVI

2010-01-10T21:50:00.001+01:00

Welcome to 2010!

2010-01-10T20:29:00.005+01:00

Hello Everyone,

These last three or four weeks have flown bye! I kind of wish I could go back and live them again, but no need for looking in the past. I got the memories in my memory bank. It started off with my trip to Prague/Slovakia to spend Christmas with Julian and finished with my fiancé visiting.

I left on the 23rd, the morning after our loss to the top team, but I will get to the games later. I arrived in Prague at 10 AM and was greeted by Julian and his dad (Big BOSS). The funniest thing about me flying to Prague was that there were like 5 other airports that were closer to Julian, but of course I went with the cheapest ticket. That would come back to bite me as I had to board a train at 4:30 in the morning on the 27th for the 7 hour trip back to Prague! (The trip was worth missing out on some sleep). Never the less I wanted to see Prague so I could put it on my list of places I have been. It was a pretty cold and drizzling on us, but we still went to the main squares. I got a good feel for the city and it was beautiful even with the bad weather. We ate these things called Langos similar to a funnel cake only without the sweet. It was the same kind of dough only they put garlic, cheese and ketchup on it (anything with ketchup I will usually love). We also had a Czech beer which was excellent. Julian swears you will not have a better beer then a draft beer in Prague. I will have to agree with him at the moment.

We then started are journey to Ruzomburek in Slovakia. It was about a 6 hour car ride that flew by as we were catching up on all things. We also picked up his brother from his in-laws on the way so he could hang with us for one night. We stayed at his grandma’s apartment that was a 2 minute drive from his parent’s place. Slovakia is like a lot of other countries in Europe that celebrate Christmas on the 24th. They don’t put up the tree until the 24th. The only job while I was there was to help put up the tree. I helped put the tree together then Julian did all the decorating of it. After the tree is up they then have dinner. They make a HUGE dinner and then eat on the leftovers for Christmas day meals. We had cabbage soup, potato salad, pork, fish, and some bread. I loved the cabbage soup!! Then on the 26th they have another big meal of duck, dumplings, soup and potatoes. My goodness they were two unbelievable meals that I’m craving again as I type this.

We really did not do anything real special, but eat and enjoy each other’s company. I watched 3 or 4 Slovakian movies that were folk tales. They show them every Christmas and they are like 50 or 60 years old. I couldn’t understand the language obviously, but Julian was pretty good about translating the important parts. I must say the movies did not crack my top 1,000 list of best movies!! We did go up to the mountain one day. Ruzomburek is surrounded by two mountains and normally has 10,000 winter skiers vacationing there, but there was no snow so that kind of hurt business a little. We also went to the water park one evening. The water is mineral water that comes straight from the ground and it was very warm!! Of course you can’t replace Christmas at home with family, but this was an excellent substitute. The Betko’s are wonderful and Great People! I’m glad they have been a part of my life!

After the great visit to Slovakia I came back to Sweden to spend New Years with Morgan. I picked her up at the airport on the 31st. She spent 9 days here and I took her back to the airport on the 9th of January. She was over here last time I was here so I didn’t really have to play tour guide or anything like that. I must say I was a little disappointed with the lack of things going on for New Years. I guess in the states it is more of a hangout with friends and family, but I don’t know enough ppl here. We just hung out and watched a couple movies then headed down to the lake for the Fireworks. They defiantly didn’t disappoint with that again. I think the fireworks here would beat many Fourth of July firework shows. They are all done by individuals here which makes it twice as dangerous. One of the fireworks misfired and sent little sparks everywhere including a teammate’s jacket. After the lake we went to a teammate’s house for a little while. We did find a pretty fun card game called monopoly deal. We played many games of this, and I was a little disappointed as I was not able to dominate like I did in UNO! After her visit I still want to marry her so I guess you can call her trip a success;)

After a long break we got back on the court for two games this week. We lost one and won one. The first one was up in Plannja which is a pretty tough place to play. They are in the top three right now. There man player is Brandon McKnight who played at Purdue. Once again we had three players on the court from Indiana!! We didn’t play all that bad, but def. had a stretch of about 5 minutes that lost the game for us. I didn’t shoot the ball as well as I would have liked esp. on their soft rims. I went 3-10 from three and 1-2 from 2. I get pretty frustrated with myself when I settle for threes too much. We are right there and we know we can beat them just have to focus in a little more.

The second game was at home, and we have now won 5 in a row at home. It was a pretty sloppy game with the refs feeling they needed to call a foul every 4 seconds on someone, but we played very well defensively and was in control the whole game. I finished with 18, and 8 boards and finally got my first dunk of the season!
We have a very important stretch of about 7 or 8 games where we need to get a lot of wins to get a little breathing room on the playoff line. Right now there are 3 teams that are 8-15 including us and one team that is 9-15 so we are right there but still need a little separation. We have a big away game against the 5th place team on Tuesday.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

3 in a ROW, and a road win!

2009-12-21T00:10:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

It’s a winter wonderland over here!! I think we have had a snow storm every day of the past week. As soon as the sidewalks get cleared the fluffy stuff starts flowing down again. I actually feel like I’m in Sweden this time. Two years ago I think it snowed more in Indiana then here.

We had our Christmas party on Saturday with the organization (all the people behind the scenes). It really didn’t feel like much of a Christmas party, I mean no music, no decorations, no secret Santa’s. They did have some food though so that usually makes everything better. They had a lot of cold salads and then cold fish (that is big around Christmas time here)! The salmon with lemon was on point though (slang for GOOD)! They had some other cold meats as well. The team had a great time just hanging out and talking.

I leave for Prague on Wednesday morning for a little vacation break. The original plan was to meet up with AJ Graves, an old teammate of mine who is playing in Poland this season. Fortunately for him he gets to go home for Christmas. Julian Betko another teammate of mine from Butler lives about 4 hours from Prague and was going to be home for Christmas. So I made plans to spend Christmas with his family. I’m pretty excited about it. When we were roommates at Butler his parents came for Christmas in the states and his mother is an excellent cook! It will be interesting to see how the Slovaks spend Christmas and should be another wonderful experience in life, I will probably only have once.

We flew to ostertund (I know I spelled this city wrong) to play Jamtland. It was like a two hour plane flight. The hotel was the same place we stayed when I played here last time. I got pretty excited to see it again because the food there was excellent. I love road trips, you get fed a lot and you just relax in a hotel room. The only difference between the college road trip and the professional road trip is you can go out after you win! We went to a small club and just enjoyed our win. We found there kebab place for our late night snack, but I must say it was not nearly as good as the Kebab House in Sodertalje. It was pretty funny as two Americans (will and I) were sitting in “Kebab City” critiquing the kebab and which place had a better one.

I have a feeling I’m going to be a good coach one day. I’m pretty sure I predicted that we were going to start winning some games and in a row! We have a 3 game win streak currently and won our first game on the road this past week. I must say we got a little lucky to come out of there with a win, but I’m not complaining at all!! We have no time to pat ourselves on the back for getting back in the playoff picture, as our next two games are away and against the first and second place teams!

I had two pretty good games again both scoring and rebounding. I have really picked up my rebounding since my injury. It is an easy way to get myself going in the game. If you can grab a couple offensive rebounds or have a couple put backs just gets your confidence up.

I will be taking a little holiday break from the blog much like the TV shows do!! I should have a lot to talk about when I return from the Christmas trip and Morgan’s visit here over New Years!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

See you in 2010

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Back on the floor!!

2009-12-13T20:57:00.006+01:00

Hello Everyone,

No! I did not forget to write the blog last week just felt like I did not have a lot to type. I feel like the blog has been a little boring this season so far. I guess I’m just getting used to the Europe lifestyle, but it is not like Sweden is very different. When I went to Poland it was somewhat of culture shock, but after already being here one season things are pretty simple. The only thing I have noticed is the pack of dog walkers.

At night I have noticed a bunch of people together with green reflecting construction vest and a ton of dogs. I’m not sure if they are walking the elderly people’s dogs or if they just have a dog walking group. I’m thinking about trying to find out how to translate “dog walker” in Swedish and I may have my second job over here. I will just post some fliers around my apartment and see if I have any takers.

This past week I did an interview with Will (the other American) for a magazine called “Newz” I believe. I must say it was one of the most unique ones I have ever done. We ended up playing two on two against the reporters. They had jerseys made up for them and everything. Morris and Jenny were the two we played against. Morris was about 5’4” and had the head band and high socks and all. So he looked good when will dunked on him a couple times. We gave them 7 points and played to 10. Of course we couldn’t let them win but we had a lot of fun playing. They had another guy taking photos of the game and we there were some really good action shots, and we staged a couple photos. It is cool for me when people who don’t play basketball or don’t know much about it come and appreciate the skills we actually have. After the game we sat down and answered some questions but they weren’t your normal questions which was also unique. The article should be pretty cool when it comes out and I will try and get some photos of it!

This past week was also spent with a lot of treatment again. I went to see the Peter the “specialist” or “chinaman” again on the other side of Stockholm. I drove there by myself which is always an adventure. I did have a GPS but that still did not stop me from getting lost and ending up in downtown Stockholm. They have a tunnel system that runs through Stockholm and there isn’t much satellite service down there. =When I came out of the tunnel it told me I was wrong, but luckily it fixed everything for me and I ended up where I needed to be. He was someone that works with needles, but he also was a chiropractor, and he did some things he called ARP. He was really good at what he does. He spent a lot of time testing my strength in my legs and then explaining why. He may have had a little bit of a God complex as he referred to himself as Jesus, and after I was done there I would think he was like a God. I think some of the things he did helped with the leg and back BUT I don't know about GOD like. The leg is not 100 percent, but I have been playing and it continues to get better every day.

We went 2-2 over the past two weeks. The two games we lost were in overtime and on the road. We should have had both of them, but shoulda woulda coulda never gets you very far. The team has been playing a lot better and we are still in position to finish 6th or 5th in the league and make playoffs if we continue to play like this. I played in 3 of the 4 games having a double-double in two of them.
We have 3 games left until a little break for Christmas. Two of the games are against the top teams in the league. Tuesday will be a great start to get a home win against a very good team.

I had a great home cooked meal this week after our home win at our young point guard’s house “Karim”. His mother cooked up some chicken and rice that was excellent. They are a very nice and big family. He has four other brothers.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Hate missing Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T22:04:00.005+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with family, friends and whoever you celebrate it with. This is always a tough time for me over here missing thanksgiving. It is the one Holiday where pretty much the ENTIRE family gets together. This has been the third thanksgiving in a row missed and it doesn’t get any easier. This Thanksgiving was a little more special as my Aunt got married on Saturday. BIG congratulations to her. I’m very happy for her! Also my brother is getting married on December 4th. I really wish I could be there for him on that great day. It is a very private ceremony and then he is having a big wedding in a year! So I will just have to act like it never happened until next year

The week was not all bad. I was invited to Phil and Stina’s house for a thanksgiving meal. This is the same family that invited me to Christmas dinner last time I was here. They live about 30 minutes outside of Sodertalje in the country. Their house is right on a lake. They are such a nice and generous family. To go out of your way on a family holiday to invite two Americans over to taste a little bit of home is pretty neat. They had a very typical thanksgiving meal as well, Turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli, some mushroom thing that was great, and PUMPKIN PIE (my favorite). Their youngest of three sons, Lucas, is trying to attend college in the states next year. He plays with the younger team and is 6’11”. He will be a very good college player.

Besides getting a great meal this week I also found out that my MRI was negative. I still have some slight pain in the hamstring, but was on the court today shooting and moving around. I’m very pleased that I should only be out another week instead of the 6-8 I thought I was going to be out. I have been driving about 15 minutes to receive treatment on the leg. I will continue to do that for a couple weeks. We are also trying to get an appointment with a guy that coach calls (chinaman). Apparently he thinks he can perform some Asian magic which I have no problem trying.

The team split this week going 1-1. We dominated our home game by 20. It was the away game at Solna that really made me miss being out there. They are first in the league and we had them down by 17 going into the 4th. The team just froze after that. They hit 5 or 6 deep threes and we started missing easy shots and making terrible turnovers. We really need someone to calm them down and keep the poise which I think I would have been able to help with. It was miserable sitting on the end of the bench and watching that. We are so close to running off 5 or 6 wins. We need to stop talking about it and make it happen though. Hopefully I will be back playing next week!!

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Mishaps & Setbacks

2009-11-22T19:01:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well as the title suggest this was not the best week! I had a lot of different things go wrong, but that is life can’t all be good! It started pretty small with my oven going out. I thought I tried everything to fix it myself like check the fuse box, shake it, and turn it on and off. None of those things seemed to work and I forced to call Leanna (she is like the team mom, will talk about her later) to see about getting it fixed. It was on the weekend so I didn’t know if they would be able to get someone over to look at it or not. She was and they were here in less than an hour. Talk about service, I would like to see a repair guy show up within a couple hours of your appliance going out. After an extensive amount of repair work (about 5 minutes) he plugged it back in and it worked! I’m guessing I left it on and the safety kicked the plug out. I never really thought it could have been the cord since I don’t move the oven. Another life lesson reinforced, always check the simple solution first. I think I was taught or heard that lesson before.

This was only the start, as the next day I woke up to a puddle of water in the kitchen. The freezer decided it wanted to defrost itself. I hate when those machines get a mind of their own, just wait till year 3000 when they will be running us. Anyway they sent another repair man over to look at it. I must also mention this was last Sunday. I’m not sure if I just got special treatment because I can’t speak Swedish or if they actually work on that day. Again, try to get a repair man in your home on a Sunday in America! This time I did try to plug it in, but it was not the problem. The guy said it just died and I needed a new one. That is hopefully coming on Monday (22nd). Now on to the painful stuff.

I was washing dishes and the glass broke on me and slit my finger. It was pretty deep and bad. I thought I was going to need stitches.I called Leanna, she lives right across the street and she was prepared with some butterfly stitches. This is a good time to talk about her. She is the team mom. She does a ton of stuff for us and it is all without pay. For example she has come over 3 or 4 times with a meal for me. It makes me feel a little homeless when I answer the door and she is standing there with a plate of food, but trust me I’m not complaining. She makes some awesome meals. She also leaves cookies in the locker room all the time. I mean there are a number of other things she has done, but of course I just focused on the food part. She is just really unbelievable. I wish I had one of her every season over here!

All right back to the cut and dishes. Fortunately for my readers this has now opened up a position. Since the option of getting a mechanical dishwasher isn’t going to work I’m offering a paid position to someone who wants to be my personal dishwasher. When I say paid you won’t be making a lot and I can’t offer any insurance. Now I know this doesn’t sound like a great gig, but hear me out. You get a free room, I’ll provide the food, I will also provide the internet and cable (thanks to the kings), and save the best for last you will have great company (ME)! It would be pretty much like college all over again except replace the classes with dish-washing and the occasional dinner you will have to make! I mean the more I type the better this is sounding. Just let me know if I have any takers and we can work out the details.

We had our first game in two weeks last Friday. It was in Boras which is about three hours away. The road trips continue to surprise me every time. When I played at Butler, you knew what to expect every road trip. You were going to leave the day before the game and practice at that gym, then you would go to the hotel, have shoot around the next morning, then leave after the game. It was the same routine every time. I don’t think I have had the same routine on an away game since I have played overseas. Granted a lot of clubs don’t have the resources that the colleges do. For example this road trip we left the day of the game by train. It was about a 2 hour train ride to some town (the landscape on the train rides is beautiful by the way). Then we got off the train and hoped on a bus for another hour. Once we arrived in Boras 4 players hoped in a taxi while the other walked to the restaurant for lunch. Then we all walked to the hotel. We then took taxis to the game and walked back after. Again I’m not complaining about any of it, I just find it funny the many different ways trips go over here.

In the two weeks leading up to this I had some of my best practices and I was really feeling in shape. Then on Thursday I hurt my hamstring in practice. It wasn’t terrible but it was painful. I really didn’t want to sit out the game after the hard work leading up to the game and also because we already had two important players also injured. I tried to play in the game and was alright in the first quarter. I could definitely tell I wasn’t 100% as I was having trouble keeping up with some of the players. Then in the second quarter they were on a fast break 2 on 1 and I went to jump to block the shot and came down with some terrible pain. I was not able to play at all in the second half. In hindsight I wish I would have just sat out the game for I may have made it worse. I have always had trouble sitting myself out, but something I will need to get better with. I have an MRI on Monday (22nd) to see if I tore it or how bad the injury is. No matter what it says I will be out at least 2 weeks and at most 7 weeks.

We ended up losing the game by 1 with three starters out. We had a few things go wrong at the end, but we could have and should have pulled that one out. We continue to show our youth on the floor. I am the 4th oldest guy on the team with the oldest player 28. That is extremely young for a professional team. I think we play harder than any other team in our league, but that doesn’t always get you wins have we have seen with our 2-10 record. We will continue to work hard and fight to get some wins.
I’m trying to stay positive through this experience as I know there are far worse things going on in the world than me sitting on the sideline with an injury. It just is very stressful when you work so hard to get somewhere and then you experience a setback like this. This is sort of the worst time this could have happened with us playing 9 more games before Christmas. I will get the results of the MRI and then we have a couple people I am going to be working with to treat and also rehab the leg.

Until Next Time!

The European Hotel

European Hotel after Americans check in

This is BC gone for now

2009-11-15T18:50:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

This week was a very uneventful week. The game we had was rescheduled because our coach had to attend some coaching thing in Chicago. We actually had a couple days off from practice to rest up and mentally prepare to attack these next 10 games before Christmas! We need to go 7-3 or better to really have any chance of making playoffs. It is very doable and I think we are making strides as a team to get there.

With my off time I was able to catch the opening game for Butler! They had their hands full with Davidson and I was pretty impressed with how well Davidson played. Butler is going to get the A game of every team with their ranking. Butler got off to a slow start, but nice to see them fight through that and pick up a nice win. It only gets tougher from here. I think the play I was most surprised by was when Mack attacked the bucket and almost dunked the ball and picked up the foul. I didn’t know he had that in him, but if he attacks like that all season he is going to be tough.

We had a little Christmas in November. We received winter jackets and other gear (sweat suits, polo, and practice gear) this week. If you couldn’t tell by the picture I love the jacket. It is one of the warmest I have had. It will come in very handy in this land!

I will no longer be asking for reader participation ! It was very depressing only seeing three comments and none of those comments had a restaurant for me to check out! (Thanks for the comments though) Don’t get me wrong I don’t need comments to know who is reading this, just thought it would be nice to pick the brains of some of the readers! And yes this is a guilt trip:)

Welp very short and very boring post, but I will leave you with a funny clip from the office! In case you haven’t seen it! (this is special for you mother)

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Where is the sun!

2009-11-08T20:41:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well I have now been here close to four weeks and I may have seen the sun 4 times! Winter darkness has continued to creep in as well. It starts getting dark around 4 or 4:30, and it also snowed twice last week! Nothing that stuck, but enough to make me envious when I’m watching the colt’s game and seeing the sun come through Lucas oil stadium. I had some PR to do this week at a school. We shot with the kids and handed out some tickets to the games. Of course it was outside and on one of those days where it was snowing! I lost my gloves on our last road trip so I couldn’t even feel my hands rebounding for the kids. They didn’t seem to mind that I was throwing some bad passes they were just happy to be out shooting!

I found a new edition to the town of Sodertalje. They now have 2 subways! The great thing about subway here is they still have the stamps. I have made two trips and both sandwiches were pretty good! The foot long here is closer to $10 and defiantly over that if you get the meal. The only thing missing from their condiment line are banana peppers. Tapco, the Italian restaurant right in front of my apartment has quickly become a favorite on the list again. Their pan pizza rivals that of pizza hut, and they have a secret sauce. I don’t even know how to describe it, but I will try anyway. It is similar to like garlic butter and an alfredo sauce. They also have killer lasagna that reminds me of a place back home in Reynolds, Indiana called USA restaurant. You may be asking yourself right now why he is telling me this information, well I had a thought. Since I love food, I wanted to use my blog to help me find great food spots. So I’m asking my readers this week if you know of any “hidden gems” like USA restaurant and tapco to leave me a comment with them! It can be anywhere, the states, Sweden, heck even Canada, may be there one day. (Grandpa you are only allowed to list 5, because I don’t want you using your whole day just writing all the restaurants you know!) So here is a picture of the all you can eat pancakes to get your mind rolling!!

BASKETBALL

Well we split this week 1-1, which we can’t do that too many times. We need to get rolling and put together a win streak. We play hard and we play with a lot of effort but that is just not enough when we go against the top teams in the league. It was enough when we played Jamtland which is the last place team.

We hoped on them 19-2 in the first quarter and coasted to the easy 20 point victory. Even that game showed are youth, just playing even with them the rest of the game and not having that killer instinct. I had a pretty decent game scoring 17 with 3 steals 3 boards and 3 assists. Again that is a team we are suppose to beat we need to start getting some wins against top teams.

We played the first place team on Saturday and just did not come out ready to play. I got off to a bad start going 0-4 in the first quarter and having two fouls early on. I was brought here to be the man and I defiantly need to play better than I did Saturday. We had our chances had it within 3 late in the game, but just couldn’t get over the hump. We also had 22 TO and missed 11 free throws. I’m very surprised we had a chance. I finished with 8 points, 4 boards, 2 assists and 1 steal. I also was 0-5 from three. They were good looks just missed them. I also tweaked my knee in the second quarter. Hopefully it is just a hyper extension.

The good thing is we have two weeks off which will hopefully give us a chance to get better as a team and also give me a chance to get in better shape and heal whatever I did to my knee!

I'm going to give a shout out to my lil brother who has taught himself how to play the guitar!! I think that is pretty cool and I am a little jealous because I have no music ability at all!!

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Every time I open my FRIDGE!!

2009-11-01T20:15:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Man, Every time I open my fridge here it makes me miss home. Not the kind of miss that you want to hop on a plane and go home, more of an appreciation for how nice I had it in the summer. I had my choice of Gatorade, green tea, orange juice, fruit juice, grape juice, Kool-Aid, lemon aid and the occasional Michelob light. Yes, they do have many of those drinks here and actually I might even say the apple juice is better here. The problem lies in the big hill I must climb to the store. Anyway let’s get back to the topic of appreciation! I never really gave a proper thank you to my parents for housing me this summer. It is a unique thing when you build more of a friendship with your parents and really enjoy hanging out with them! So anyway THANK YOU!!!

There was a basketball camp this past week during a fall break for the students. We had to work 2 days for a couple hours. I learned the Swedish word for “substitutions” because the kids did not understand me when trying to sub them in an out. This club is pretty good about doing promotional things for games which we are usually involved with in some way. It is nice to get out and do some different things while putting a smile on kid’s faces.

This week was not a very good week on the court for the kings. We lost both games, one at home and one on the road. We just are not playing well defensively and it is hard to win games when you don’t defend. Coach actually read the stats today and it is not something you want to hear. We are last in almost every category defensively. Unless we figure out how to fix that we will stay at the bottom of the league.

I went from one extreme to the other in the games. The game at home against Sundsvall was horrific. I shot 1-8 from the field and finished with 3 points. I just could not get anything going. Too many games like this is what gets you sent home!!! The team didn’t play all that bad, but again defensive mistakes just killed us. They have a player on their team that played for the kings last time I was here and is a friend of mine. It was fun to go up against him the whole game, but wish I would have performed a little better.

The other game was in Gothia, which was about a two and a half hour train ride. This is another thing I can add to the list of things I have done. My first train ride to a game. I must say not a very big accomplishment, but still comes off the list. The hotel was called Scandic Crown, and the inside of the hotel reminded me of an embassy suites. We had our pre game and after game meals there. The pre game meal was excellent. They had some cheesy potatoes and some kind of fish. It looked almost like salmon patties, but the fish was not salmon. The after meal was just meat sauce with some bow tie noodles. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but many places in Europe put ketchup on their pasta. Sweden is one of those places, I’m one for following the crowd when it comes to food so I also did it, and it was pretty good, but I could probably put ketchup on anything and like it. In fact I think I used to put it on my broccoli (just a random note about me).

The game was in a different gym then their normal home gym which was fine with me. Their normal home gym is on a grey rubber floor. The gym we played in reminded me of an old boys and girls club gym. We got off to a horrible start. We were down 18-2 after the first 3 minutes. We pulled within 4 by the end of the first. They pulled away at the start of second half and ended up winning by about 20. Again defensively we are just not stopping anybody. They shot over 50% from three and 60% from 2, you are not going to beat anybody giving up those kind of numbers.

I had a really good first quarter and got my shot going. I finished the game with 21 points on 3-8 from 2 and 5-10 from three for 21 points and 3 steals. I defiantly could have made a few more of the 2’s. I haven’t been finishing well lately and I have not been getting to the free throw line. Two things I will be working on improving. They name a player of the game for both team and I was named it for our team. They gave me a 2 GB flash drive, a nice thermos, and 2 lottery tickets (I won 50 Krowns).

We have 2 more games before a 2 week break, we defiantly need to get these two wins to go into the break with a little confidence and then try and get better.

Hopefully everyone had a safe and fun Halloween. It is called “all saints day” here in Sweden. They put lights on the tombstones and they go and visit them at night. I live right across the cemetery and it looks pretty nice all lit up. They do dress up, but it is more the night life crowd. I don’t believe they pass out any candy either, but I’m not entirely sure on all the customs for this day.

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

I didn't come here to lose

2009-10-23T23:07:00.004+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well I have safely arrived in Sweden. We are going on the fifth day here. The trip over the Atlantic seems to be getting quicker. I think that is due to me getting used to the 8 hour flight, but it is nice when you fly straight in and not have any stops anywhere. It is a good flight when you get row of four all to yourself and it is a great flight when you get a row of four and the screens work. Unfortunately mine was just a good flight, but can’t complain about that. I followed everyone’s advice (or three people) that I should hydrate the entire flight. I drink a lot of water and juice anyway, but I upped the level this time. I believe I drank close to half a gallon of water, a couple Gatorades, and a few cups of apple juice. Luckily, I was in that row to myself so I didn’t bother anyone when I made continuous trips to the lavatory. Pork must also be on sale right now because SAS (the airline) loved serving it. We had pork roast for dinner with broccoli, it was a little fatty but it is airplane food. Our breakfast was a cold ham sandwich, can’t say that is exactly what I was craving. We arrived in Sweden around 8:00 in the morning.

One of the helpers on the team picked us up. He didn’t speak much English so it was a pretty quite ride to Sodertalje. The only down fall of the ride was the guy was a smoker so that did not help with the cough that I’m still trying to get over. He didn’t smoke in the car when we were in it, but you could still smell it all over. After about a 45 minute car ride we arrived in our apartments.

I actually am living in the same apartment as last time I played here. They did fix it up a little bit. They replaced the 1970’s couch with two leather pieces, a 3 seater and a 2 seater. They also put a smaller desk table for the computer. The bathroom however is not much better. It still has a distinct smell and it is not a GOOD distinct smell. I have to leave the window open at all times. I basically freeze while brushing my teeth. The dentist would probably not suggest this because I think I’m skipping on the 2-3 minutes. Sorry Brian or should I say DR. Ligon! The main problem with apartment has been the TV, the TV is kind of old and for some reason it does not want to play my playstation 3 in color. The PS3 is like my life line over here. I have tried a number of different options. First I tried will’s cord (the other American on the team) nothing changed, then I brought a TV from the locker room which looked a little newer then the one in my apartment, NO CHANGE. So at this point I thought it might be my system so I had Will bring his PS3 over to see if it was my system. YES, I know I seem like a demanding teammate, but like I said this is my life line and he lives right across the street from me. We plugged his in and NO CHANGE. My only avenue left is to buy a flat screen TV and see if a newer TV will work. I’m not entirely excited about this because TV’s over here are much more expensive. When I looked the other day it was like 4,000 crowns for a 26 inch. That is over $500!!!

It has been nice coming back to a place that you are familiar with. You don’t have those extra couple weeks where you are trying to adjust. I can just focus on playing which has been nice. We get our lunches for free like the last time I was here. The funny thing is the places are all the same. Two Italian, two Greek, and the buffet spot. They did however mix up the days that you go to each spot. We now go to the buffet on Thursday’s instead of Friday. This change was made because they serve all you can eat pancakes on Thursday’s. These aren’t the fluffy pancakes and they are a little sweeter. I would say they are more like crepes. They have the whipped cream and fruit topping which I destroyed! Maybe next blog I will take pictures of all my favorite meals at the lunch spots just so you can get a feel for what I eat over here. I also introduce will to his first European Kebab and of course he loved it!

Okay, so I guess I should talk a little bit about basketball since that is the reason I’m here. The team has a lot of players that were here when I last played here. They also added a point guard that I played against and also some young guys moved up. I did a couple interviews when i was first arrived and the quote I used for all of them was " I did not come here to lose" apparently they loved this according to the paper. Practice went well the first couple days. Of course the focus is mainly on getting the plays down while also trying to get your wind back. I was extremely sore after the first couple. I really didn’t have time to worry about that since we played on Friday only two days of being here.

The game went well. The team was 0-6 before we came in, but it was not like we were the saviors. The core was in place already and the team plays extremely hard. We were able to give a boost and get the first win. I played pretty well especially after coming off the flu and the jet lag. I was 5-6 from 2, 1-3 from 3 and finished with 14 points, 4 rebounds, and 2 steals. I played 29 minutes and that was plenty. I did feel it towards the end of the game. The great thing is I get to play myself into shape, which is much better than going through preseason in my opinion. Will also played well for his first game professionally. I would imagine it is much harder for him as he is coming into a completely new situation, not only with the whole new country, but also much faster game. I remember when I first game out I had a rough couple games in France and here in Sodertalje.

On Saturday we had to do a little sponsor event at a store called MAXI. Once again I forgot my camera but I will not forget it again! They set up a basket in the store and had people shoot for candy bars. They also had a little speaker system set up. I couldn’t help the urge to get on it and announce we were HOOTDA (shooting) with the kings. I also felt like I should say MAXI in a very deep voice over and over! The A is hard pronounced more like an O I would say! If you understand what I’m trying to get at you might understand why I felt the urge to say it all deep. If not I’m sorry for my wasting your time with this paragraph.

We play again on Tuesday and Friday. Both games will be good test to see how we continue to come together as a team and people start seeing their role on the team.

These are a couple links to basketball pages here in Sweden. If you have Firfox it should give you the option to translate directly from the page.

http://www.mandarinab.com/webbtv/sbbk (if you click on October 22 there is an interview of me)

www.SBBK.se (the team website)

http://www.svenskabasketligan.se/ (the league website)

Eurobasket.com (site where you can follow AJ-Poland, Mike-Belgium, TJ-Germany, and any other European players you know)

Until Next Time!

This is BC gone for now

Sweden Here we come AGAIN

2009-10-17T19:16:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

What a difference a week can make! After writing last week’s blog there has been ANOTHER change. I found out on Tuesday that my old team in Sweden, Sodertalje Kings, needed a player. This was good news for me, but unfortunate for a friend of mine. Joe Nixon who played at DePauw was the player that was signed to go there, but due to a back injury he was not able to play. I have not been able to really get too excited about this as I have been battling a case of either H1N1 or just the flu.

There are a couple reasons that going to Sweden will be a better fit then the Development league. The first being it is better financially for me, that is not always the most important but it is important. The second is there is little risk in it. I have been there before so they know what I can do, where as the development league there is always a chance of getting cut (I don’t think I would have but still a slight risk). Lastly, I’m going to be asked to be the MAN! This comes with a lot of pressure, but something that I know I’m ready for. I haven’t really had this kind of responsibility since I was in high school. The only thing is I will have to ask them to be a little patient as I will have to get myself back in shape. I was in really good shape until this flu bug invaded me! I have not been able to work out for over a week now! I have a couple days left on the medicine the doctor gave me. I’m hoping I will at least be able to work out on Monday before 8 hour plane ride on Tuesday. I am supposed to be playing in the game on Friday as well!!!

Outside of basketball it will be fun to go back to a familiar place. I had a lot of fun and many of the same people are still in Sodertalje. I am hoping they have finished their construction on the roads outside the apartments, which is the only thing I hated, getting woken up early in the mornings. I guess there won’t be a ton of new food stories since I have had many of the Swedish cuisine. I have an obsession with food so I’m sure I won’t be able to stay away from that topic. Hopefully, some family can get over this time and see all that Stockholm and Sodertalje has to offer.

The next blog update will be when I’m in Sweden and I’m sure I will have some stories from the airport or airplane!

Until Next Time

This is BC gone for now!

Still nothing official!

2009-10-11T01:14:00.003+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I know it has been a while since I have posted a good blog entry, or what I consider to be a good blog entry (photos, funny stories of any kind) and don't get your hopes up because this is just a mediocre to poor one. So I will have to start this one of by correcting my last update. I had it a little premature. Then I can get into Butler Homecoming and Morgan and I day at a fun farm by St. Louis.

My last entry had me going to Bakersfield, California. This was not entirely correct or at least not yet. My agent was taking a trip to Europe so I postponed singing the D-league contract in hopes that he could scramble up a job. He has since returned and there is only a possibility of a job in Europe. It would be with a team in Sweden and I wouldn’t have to go until December. I will have until next week to see if this becomes a reality. The NBA development leagues draft is on Thursday november 5th. If I end up signing the Development league contract then I would be in the draft. Then it would be up to Bakersfield or Ft. Wayne or some other surprise team to draft me. I can’t say which one I want to happen more because they both bring pros and cons, but the funny thing is neither is a for sure thing. I will hopefully know by the end of next week, but I am done stressing about it. I will have to just accept whatever happens and move on. It is not a good year to be in the middle of the pack of players, we just have to let it play out and go for there.

There have been some advantages of being home past August, one being able to see some of my siblings’ soccer and tennis matches. Another being that I attended my first Butler Homecoming since I graduated (which meant qudoba 2 nights in a row). It is a lot of fun to see so many people that I spent four years of my life with in classes, and on campus, (yes I did go to class)!! A lot of them were doing really well in their career fields. I had a lot of people talking about how skinny I looked. The only reason I point this out is because many of them saw me when I was a 4/5 for Butler having to guard players like Al Horford. I have since had to slim up so I can be a 2/3 and guard players like Daniel Ewing and David Logan.

Brian Ligon and James parker two teammates of mine at Butler were able to come as well. We spent a lot of time with the current Butler team and it was a lot of fun to share the stories with them. Man they are going to have a heck of a team. As long as they don’t let all the media talk about them get to their head. I don’t think they will have a chance to listen to the media with the tough schedule they will face early on. With the type of players Butler recruits I don’t think that would ever be a problem.

This weekend was spent in St. Louis with Morgan. She is finishing her last three months of rotations for Occupational Therapy and then she can start bringing in some bread for us!! We went to Eckert fun farms about 10 minutes south of St. Louis. It had a huge apple orchard and pumpkin patch. I was too cheap to buy any apples so I just ate them while we walked through the orchard. It had a ton of other activities like pig racing, camel rides, pumpkin cannon, farm store, and whatever else you want. I sound like a commercial for them! We ate some ham bean soup, cornbread, and took some pictures. It was a wonderful day especially after the nonstop rain in Indiana.

Well that is a little more than my one sentence update two weeks ago! Hopefully next one will be with me having a job!

Quick update

2009-09-20T22:08:00.002+02:00

Should be signing a contract to play in the NBA development league later this week!

Running around the country!

2009-08-16T21:55:00.005+02:00

Hello Everyone

Some people have been getting on me about not updating the blog so here is the update! I hope I can remember what all to talk about as a lot of things have happened since the last blog. I went up and worked the Michigan University camp which was a great experience, visited one of my old teammates and best friend in Florida, and went on a road trip out east with my grandparents. That should give me plenty to write about!

Ann Arbor and the Michigan camp was a great week for me and possibly my career in coaching. My old coach and friend from Butler, Jeff Meyer was the one that hooked me up with the position. It was much like any other college camp, but the reason I did it was to broaden my networking. Going through business school at Butler I believe I heard about how important networking is about 22 times a class. They are right though especially when it comes to the coaching world. There were a lot of other coaches I was able to meet and speak with. Coach Beilein reminds me a lot of coach Lickliter, humble, hard worker, and very passionate about basketball. It was a lot of fun the entire week, but I think that had a lot to do with the 10 kids I coached. I had kids that were going to be 9th graders. We won the championship so that always makes things better. I had one of the best compliments from one of the kid’s parents. They came up and said they have been coming to the Michigan camp for over 8 years and I was the best coach they have had. I was very flattered, but then they said they were going to send a letter to Michigan as well. That was just gravy on top after a great week in Ann Arbor. I also got to get a sneak peak of the big house, and stand in the middle of the field. It would be much better if the 100,000+ ppl were in there, but still a very cool stadium.

I also spent my annual week down in St. Petersburg, Florida with Brian Ligon, a teammate from Butler. Like usual we had a great time. I tried my hand at wakeboarding and can’t say I did a very good. I almost got up on the last one and then the rope snapped on me. We spent some time at the Ferg’s sports bar where we ordered 50 wings and watched UFC 100 and met some unique people! We also had a day of firing the BB gun, we won’t go into details on that one! I also introduced Brian to the world of hooka, not that I am an expert. I just have been to one in Europe! I think I’m ready to go back already (to Florida not the hooka bar!).

Finally, I took a trip with the grandparents and one of my little cousins to the northeast. The purpose of the trip was to see my brother graduate from the navy Chaplin school in Newport, RI. I must say not everyone is as lucky as me to have grandparents like I do. It is amazing how loving these two people are. They decided to drive over 28 hours for a 2 hour graduation. They are so loving and supportive of all 29 million grandchildren they have (ok maybe it is only 21). The crazy thing is the each grandchild thinks they are the favorite. That is amazing that my grandparents are able to share that much time to build a relationship with all of them that they all believe they are the favorite. I know my grandparents have no favorites, but Never the less I’m still the favorite grandchild!!! I think that my brother said it the best in an interview he had, he said “My grandpa always told me I was a crone and I represent that name”. My Grandparents have showed us what it means to live a good Christian life and they have never disappointed me in 25 years!

Well back to the road trip we left on a Sunday morning and made it to Binghamton, NY. We then drove the rest of the way to sterling, MA. That is where my great uncle lives. It is about 50 miles outside of Boston. We spent a day there and went through a giant corn maze. Who knew we would go out east and go through a corn maze! I was ordering clam chowder like I had never had it before, but man it was so good. I was also able to get an entire Lobster and prime rib for $20. We then drove in to Newport, Rhode Island which was about an hour in a half from sterling. That place was beautiful. They had some huge mansions and something they called a cliff walk. It was three miles long and ran next to the water, just beautiful. We took a trolley around the city to see everything. It was like 102 degrees so that was not a lot of fun. My parents and Loren did not know I was coming out so the look on their face that evening when we ran into them was priceless. Loren graduated the next morning in a short, but nice ceremony. After that we drove over to Boston and took a trolley around the city and also a water ferry. We also went to cheers and got some food. I must say that is a terrible idea. If you are ever in Boston and want food, do not go to cheers! It was a cloudy and chilly day, but very fun. We finished up our road trip with a stop to Niagara Falls. That place is absolutely beautiful. The last time I was there it was freezing and was half frozen still. I liked going in the summer a little better. The trip was fabulous and I ate like a king. We just had a ball. I hope I get an opportunity to take a road trip with my grandparents again sometime soon!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now!

slacking!!

2009-07-19T23:19:00.002+02:00

I know have been slacking quite a bit on the blog lately! prob. losing some followers out of it, but it is just not as exciting for me to talk about what I do at home! the real excitement comes when i enter the foreign lands and see all types of things that i don't see here! No news to report on yet, Europe is moving very slow this year due to the global wide recession. Hopefully, i will be signing a new contract in about a week! I will be heading up to Michigan University next week to expand my networking for when I want to become a college coach!

Until next time!

BC gone for now

Fathers's Day, My birthday, and First day of summer

2009-06-22T03:46:00.002+02:00

WOW, this Sunday is full of events. If you read the title you can probably guess the events. Yes it is fathers day, my birthday, and the first day of summer. That is a lot to handle. It has been a great day full of events including to steak places (one for lunch, One for dinner).

I don't have a lot of time to type a detailed blog today, but i will say i'm blessed to have two great dad's in my life who have taught me many things through my life that have allowed me to make it to 25 today!!

I have my little mini camp starting tomorrow so we see how many kids show up and try to get them better.

I will detail a blog next week about everything!

Until next time,

BC gone for now

When is my next cruise?

2009-06-08T04:54:00.005+02:00

Hello Everyone,

So I have returned from my cruise! It was a great time. Almost every one of my posts on this blog has been about food so this one will be no exception. If you want good food and as much as you want whenever you want (on vacation that is) then a cruise is for you.

Many of you probably know how a cruise works, but if you don’t I will enlighten you. When you first get on the ship they have a full buffet waiting on you, and everyday after that they have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner buffet. The great thing is that is not your only options. They then have 2 other sit down restaurants where they wait on you. You can order as many appetizers, as many entrees, and as many desserts. I usually kept it moderation. I do have some workouts with scouts this week. The dinners are not like chicken either. I’m talking about lobster, shrimp, and scallop linguine, or steak. Well I will not harp on the food to long but yes it was very good.

There are two must haves on a cruise, a big stomach, and a balcony room. The first one we already went over, but the balcony is key. Some people might not think that this is a big deal, but I guess if you’re a big guy and like space this helps. The number one great thing about the balcony is you don’t have to go to the top deck to get great views. You just walk out your balcony and see everything you want. The second is that I’m a nap person, so the people you are with may not be. Instead of heading out of the room or just sitting in the dark they are able go get the views or read a book or heck do whatever they want (as long as they are quiet). Plus you can order room service whenever you choose and enjoy it on the balcony. I did that for breakfast.

The cruise also had a nice workout room as most if not all have those so I was able to stay in shape, but my shot was a little harder to keep in good shape. They had a full court with two rims only they had a volleyball net stretched across at all times. I say a full court I guess it was two rims across from each other with some space. So I got up early one morning ready to keep my shot good. Well that was a littler harder then I thought. I picked up the ball and it weighed about 40 pounds as it had rained the night before. Then I started shooting and realized that the rims were worse then the fair rims, where they try to con you into making a shot for a stuffed animal. These rims were harder to make then that. We will find out tomorrow if it the cruise hurt my shot. I don’t think it will be to bad and the cruise was a much needed vacation.

The entertainment on the ship was pretty good. They had a comedian that really got the crowd into making a fool out of themselves. He had them reenact the wizard of oz having people act like tin man and so on. They also had a couple nights of karaoke. There were some funny acts, some good acts, and then the person that wanted to be an American idol over and over and over again. I think her name was Debby and I heard her sing a few to many country westerns that I could have lived without. We also spent one day on the beach where we rented some rafts. We actually went too far around the rocks and had the lifeguards blowing the whistle at us, but we got to see some crabs crawling on the rocks so it was worth it. The best part about the cruise was probably Atlantis in Nassau. It is a massive resort themed after the lost city of Atlantis. They have aquariums, pools, and water exhibits every where.

I would highly recommend a cruise vacation if you have never tried one. I’m ready to book my next one.

Wish me luck this week as I will be working out for a job next season!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

The Holidays keep on comming!

2009-05-25T17:40:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Seems like every two weeks has been a holiday, we had Easter, then mothers day, and now Memorial Day, A holiday for remembering all the brave men and women who have and do serve our country in the military. The day is usually spent visiting the cemetery or going to memorial services and then grilling out and having family over! It is not very nice today though so the corn hole will not be the big hit.

Not a lot to talk about this week, the only big activity I did was go to May Day. It is a huge rock concert where 8 or 9 bands play all evening. The headliner was Disturbed, and I like a lot of their songs. I was able to avoid the mosh pits, but did get some good video and pictures of it. The crowd also decided to start three fires in the lawn. I’m sure I stuck out like a sore thumb, with most the guys having long hair or mow hawks. I did however fit right in with the tattoos as there was prob. a billion dollars worth of tattoos there. Overall it was a fun event just not sure I will ever go back.

I also got back in the office last week working out at champion’s academy. The owner and runner of it is Ed shilling and he has built up quite the operation in 3 years. His workouts are pretty tough and he has had a lot of pros come through there. I will work out two more time there before the Spain scout and some others come in June. The great thing is I have seen some improvements in my game when we play 3 on 3. My good buddy skip was up there on Friday. We were the veterans and we ran the court.

I have a cruise coming up in a week to the grand Bahamas, Nassau and stirrup cove. It should be a nice relaxing vacation for me. I will get some pictures and the video up here in the next entry.

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

2009-05-11T21:24:00.012+02:00

Hello Everyone,

So Yesterday was mother’s day! A day to celebrate all that mother’s do for their children! I think I have the best MOM in the world! My mother has done so much for me growing up. Always taking me or following me around the country with my numerous tournaments in grade school all the way until the final game at butler. She has given and done more then just lend her support, but I think that is the best part about her. She has supported me through everything the good and even the bad. The only thing she has ever asked from me is that I be around to spend some time with her. That is a pretty easy and enjoyable request! I wish I knew how to be gushier with my words and write 7 paragraphs, but that is just not me! All I can say is that I love her and she means the world to me! It would also be wrong for me not to mention my step-mother. She possesses every trait that you would want in a mother and I love her very much as well

Next up is ……. FOOD (I’m sure many of you could have guessed that one). One of the reasons America is one of the fattest countries is because of our restaurants. I can illustrate this point very easily. There was a restaurant in Poland called Bella Vista. Of course by the name you know this is Italian. The only time we would go to the restaurant was when they had there 50% off during the week. I had to order two entrees to fill up, most of the time I would get lasagna and chicken Alfredo. In Indianapolis we have an Italian restaurant called Maggiano's. If I ordered the lasagna here I would be full and then be able to box the rest up and have enough for lunch and maybe even dinner the next day. In terms of healthiest which way is healthier?? I don’t really care!! I work out a ton and I want the most food for my money, yes I try to be very frugal! With all that being said I move introduce to you two restaurants in downtown Memphis that have now moved in to my top 10 list (if I had one of those).

The first being Rendezvous. It is a restaurant that specializes in Ribs. The location was in an alley, but you would have thought it was in time square by the amount of people who were eating and waiting for a table at 8 PM on a Wednesday night. I would have hated trying to get in there on a Friday or Saturday. The place had a ton of history and character hanging on its wall and ceilings. The menu was simple; you pick your meat ribs, brisket, or chicken. All dishes come with baked beans and coleslaw. I ordered the ribs and brisket combo because I like variety. They serve all the meals on paper plates. I bet the servers love not having to do dishes. They had some of that down south sweat tea that was excellent. The place started back in 1908 with the guy making ham and cheese sandwiches and then he realized he had a basement with smokers. The rest is well you know history!!

The second place was well you can prob. see by the picture kookyCanuk. My brother filled us in that they have a 7lb hamburger. If you eat the 7lb burger in under an hour it is free. Nothing like combining food and challenges in America! We had 6 adults and 3 small kids and this one burger filled us all up. We got a couple additional sides but wow as you can tell from the picture below it was huge!! I really wanted to try and eat it myself but prob. not good for my training and would have set me back for no reason except, well would have been cool to hang my photo up.

We also toured Graceland, which is the home of Elvis. I have to admit going into it I was not very excited. I mean I know Elvis’s music, but it was not around my generation. I’m so glad I went through it though. The house is not overwhelming like you would picture it to be, but it looks like time has just stopped. Everything is like it was back in the 1970’s which is pretty cool to see. The parts that impressed me the most were the trophy room where he had his Grammy’s and all the platinum and gold records. He also had a racquet ball court built which was turned into more space for all of his platinum and gold records from just the 1970’s. As well as a glass sculpture that was made for him. We walked around with a headset that told you all the details of the house as well as details of Elvis. If you are ever in Memphis I would recommend it.

Well I went to Memphis in honor of celebrating my brother’s ordination, but was able to see and do a lot of cool things in downtown Memphis, from the food, to the trolley ride, and also walking down Beale Street (The legendary street known for blues music and the birthplace of rock’n roll) with my family.

Speaking of my brother’s ordination the service was very cool if you are allowed to label church services with those kinds of words. They introduced him and he spoke to the congregation about his plans. The minister then gave a sermon basically to Loren, but could be applied by everyone. They then performed the ceremony called “laying of the hands”. Every minister that was there, I believe 8 were there, went up and spoke and prayed with him one at a time. Loren had a lot of family that were there to support him so I know it was a very proud day for him and I’m glad I was there to support him!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

Mother's DAY!!!

2009-05-10T18:53:00.001+02:00

Happy Mother's day to every mother out there!!!

Memphis trip details as well as a nice note to my mom to follow on monday!!

I got GOLD!!

2009-04-27T02:21:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

So it has been about two weeks since the last update, and I have a couple events to talk about now, one being the Optimist All-star game in Frankfort, and the other being the Korean Olympics.

I will first speak on the optimist all-star game. This was a little embarrassing for me because we lost by a last second shot. The event places the high school seniors against the alumni. I don’t know what the criteria for alumni is, but it was not very good. I mean we had some guys that looked like they had not touched a ball since they left high school. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, maybe they are swimmers now! We made the mistake of putting the better players all in the same group. We would build an 8-12 point lead and then the other team would come in and lose the lead. This happened in 5 minute intervals for 2 halves. At the end we were down by 4 so I inserted myself because I don’t like to lose. We ended up going up by one. They had a couple shots at it and we rebounded at the end. Instead of just holding the ball, the guy decided to try and pass it up the court. He threw a terrible pass that got deflected. They picked up at their own foul line and scored with .4 seconds left. I was heart broken. Not really, but I am a competitor and hate to lose, esp. like that. I’m not sure if I will be able to play in that event again.

The cool thing about it was my mother and step-farther and my grandparents got to see me play. They miss not being able to drive to butler to check out all the games. My grandmother is trying to get me to hire her as a full time cook next season! The funny thing is I told her I would love it, but I’m not sure she is ready for that commitment.

I’m currently in Memphis as my brother (Loren) is getting ordained on Wednesday to be a minister. I told a couple friends this and they asked if it was like being knighted. I am not anticipating seeing a setting like brave heart on Wednesday or any queens in the building. This is a really special event esp. knowing what my brother has overcome to get to this point. I would say he and I are as close as two brothers can get so I’m pretty excited for him. My parents and grandparents will all be coming down, so it should be a wonderful event. He is currently preaching for college, high school, and younger kids at a Korean church. Which is how I got to attend what I am calling the Korean Olympics?

I went to hear him minister this morning and he did a nice job. After church was over they invited us to this high school where like 7 Korean churches were getting together to have a sports festival. So Loren and I headed down there and got our free shirt and bag. I really had no idea what to except because Loren acted like it was just an intramural basketball game. WOW! It was a lot more then that. They divided the churches into two teams, WHITE and BLUE. I was on the White team. They had sprinting, jump rope, volleyball, kick volleyball, basketball, tennis, soccer, dodge ball, and tug of war. There were a ton of Korean people and it was a big event for them.

Now I really had no intentions on playing, but after about 7 people begged me to play I figured it couldn’t hurt anything. I participated in the basketball game. I was just out there not trying to do much, but get one dunk (people who don’t play basketball love the dunk!) I got my one dunk and we were winning by 14 so I just set the rest of the 2nd UNTIL they gave up the lead and we were losing. See the Koreans are very prideful people and hate to lose. The coach kept telling me to sub in. I subbed in got me a three and bucket to take us to overtime. Then I let them win the game for us!! I am just giving the details of the game not trying to make myself look great against a bunch of players who were not even 6’0” ft. As I was watching my brother partake in the volleyball I got coned in to doing the Tug of war!

That event is terrible; it tears up your hands so bad! We swept the series 2-0. I was with a bunch of other high school guys and a Korean that looked like he is going to participate in the worlds strongest man competition. I went up to finish watching Loren in volleyball and they lost by 1 point in the third game.

I also got to try Korean food for the first time. They had some beef, sushi, and some other really spicy thing. We also had some rice cake that looks nothing like the name. It is small green ravioli looking thing with a brown interior. I would rate the food a 6 out of 10 for the first time! I think I took a point away because they only had chopsticks and I still have no idea how to use those.

The overall best part about the day?? I went home with 2 GOLD MEDALS while Loren went home with 1 Gold and 1 Silver!!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

Thanks for the VISA!!

2009-04-14T04:06:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I have moved past what happened in Poland, but I must go back for one more story. Now the only reason I am bringing this up is because I don’t think it should happen. I hope this is not how every club does it, but maybe they do.

SO the weekend before the three of us left for home, the club informed us that we did not have work visas for Poland. They wanted us to take a trip to Ukraine on our weekend off (All-Star weekend). This would have been about a 12-17 hour trip. That is really good for you to sit in a car for that long after we had just retuned for the cup trip. Well since this trip did not sound very enticing and is something we should never had to worry about, we did some investigating on our own. What we found out is that you get 90 days on a tourist visa every 180 days. This meant if we went to Ukraine the Border patrol for Poland would not have to let us back in, if he followed the law. You may be thinking they would let you in. That was not a risk I was willing to take, with everything in Poland and then not be able to come back in. SO That Monday we became illegal citizens of Poland. That was the last straw for me, and it was not a risk I was really to take by staying. Maybe nothing would have happened but the fact that there was the slightest chance for me to be put in jail, deported, what money I did have be taken, or whatever else could have happened was just ridiculous. DO I bring this up to try to rationalize my decision for leaving? NO because I don’t need to do that, I simply bring it up because I hope it does not happen to future players. Like I said that was the final straw in terms of disrespect and terrible management.

Since being home I have been doing nothing, but riding up and down the interstates in my ford pickup truck with my dog and cowboy hat singing country tunes. Actually I’m just using the stereotype of us Americans. All though I have been doing a lot of driving only it has been in my same yellow jeep that I have had for about 9 years now. Another Easter has come and went, packed with loads of food and family. I have this problem with saying no to food. I think it might be kind of an addiction. I have already gained 8 pounds since returning home. Most of this is because I have not done anything since returning home. I have just been trying to heal my hand and foot properly. I just started working out again this week! I have had some talks with some people in hopes of landing a coaching job. That is something I have had my mind set on for a long while. I will be pursuing this some this summer, but if there are not any good opportunities then I will play overseas for one more year.

I will be playing in the optimist all-star game this Saturday in Frankfort, Should be a fun experience. I remember going to watch them when I was little. It is a game where the graduating seniors from high school around our county play alums.

I’m not sure if I have talked about this yet, but I will not be having the BC 3 on 3 Classic this year. This is due for a couple reasons. Mainly the insurance and the lack of sponsorships do to the economy. (This is the short explanation). I had a great time putting this event on last year, and maybe some day it will start up again. I will be hosting a basketball camp that will last for one week at the boys and girls club.

I will try to update the blog every two weeks with hopefully some good subjects. It is a lot easier to find things to write about when I’m out of the country. Here it is just home and feels ordinary, but I will try harder!!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

HAPPY EASTER

2009-04-12T18:47:00.000+02:00

UPDATE ON TUESDAY!! ENJOY YOUR EASTER

Damage Control

2009-04-01T16:52:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

So by now you all have prob. heard that Skip, Drew, and I are no longer with the team. I would like to start off this by saying this was by no means an easy decision. I spent hours even days consulting my parents, my agent, and other players on how best to go about this situation. Yes I know a couple posts back I said everything was fine, and the team made me out to be a liar. Everything was not fine because of more promises that were broken or swept under the rug. By now you should know I try to be as honest as possible, I don’t hide things on this blog. There were many factors that went into my decision which I will discuss a few, and I will also leave one for later post that I can not get into right at this moment, but first a message to my former teammates.

I believe captain bomba said it best after the meeting with the Yarick and the other guys about “everyone has to do what is right for them now”. This was of course said after Yarick said he would not change anything to an annex that was proposed to us (basically we wanted to protect ourselves and he said screw you go home) that was the last straw for me. He had pushed me over the edge and I wanted out. The management split the team up and forced them to longer be able to make decisions as a team. I’m sorry that it came to this and I do wish you guys the best of luck in the playoffs. Personally I knew I could no longer give 100% to the team. I was very unhappy with how management has treated us all year, but even after the cup I found it even more disrespectful. I knew with me being very unhappy it would be hard to have a good week of practice and even be effective in the games. Also from what we had found out before even going to the cup is we may not have even been insured. I don’t know how true this is or was but that is another huge risk that we were taking. I do hope you guys understand that this decision was made on what I felt was best for me. Is that selfish? In a way yes but that is what management has been all year. I know many of you personally were very upset as well on how they were treating us, but since it was your home country it was hard for you to do anything. Again I am sorry it came to this but the real people to blame are the snakes that run the club.

To the fans that feel I deserted or “ran like a girl” I am also truly sorry. This is by no means the way I wanted this to end. I have a scenario for you. Let’s say I offer you a job to come work at my step-dads jail for 9 months (he is a sheriff). When you get here I’m going to give you just a little money to live off of. Every time you are scheduled to get paid I’m going to say “next week”. Then after you are here for 5 months I’m then going to be two months behind on paying you, but still tell you things are great and we have everything coming in. so you decide to stay thousands of miles away from your family, using the very slow internet I give you to communicate to the people you need to. So you decide to stay because you like who you’re working with and you’re having a “GREAT YEAR”. As soon as you can no longer take another job, I am then going to tell you we have no more money and need you to now give up a lot of your money. So since your having fun and enjoying yourself you agree to this. Well then I’m not going to follow through with what I agreed with you. I’m now going to change it again, and not meet halfway with you. I’m also not going to give you any money for a taxi or no car.

Now if that sounds like a great job for you, come thousands of miles from your family, come on over to Indiana and I can hook it up for you. I would love to see how long you stick it out. That is in a nutshell what the situation was for me. Actually I think I put it mildly. I honestly had the most stressful and close to the worst 2 months of my life these last two. The only joy was finishing third and winning the cup. Should you guys understand what I went through? No! why would you? But before you blast me with comments about what terrible people skip, drew, and I are ,I really think you have the wrong people as the enemy. I have broad shoulders so I will take the rude comments and hatred. We did not ask for any of this, we came over and worked as hard as we could to accomplish as many wins as possible and wanted to win the cup and playoffs. Also for those who think it is solely about money I go back to the post a couple weeks ago where I mentioned no one would have stayed as long as we did if it was only about money. It is also about treating people with integrity and honesty. You can only push someone so far before they push back. Do I need you guys to understand or take my side? Of course not people will have there opinions and that is fine. I am truly sorry it came to this but I had full support from many people that I love and TRUST and at the end of the day had to do what I felt was best for me.

For the people that blame the economy for what happened in kotwica has it just a little off. The economy did not tell them to lie to us about the situation. The economy did not say to keep us after trade deadline so we could not find another way to make a livelihood. I will also give the biggest factor of all in why we HAD to leave when we did, but I can not say that now because it could potentially hurt some others that don’t need hurt.

I also saw the article that first reported us as gone. I believe it said we left after receiving our outstanding debts. This also was not the case, they still owe us money. The deal was we would sign the annex and we would have all the outstanding money before the first playoff game. Of course the club never followed through with that and said they needed another meeting on April 15. If somehow we lost they could have shut it down and not gave us ANY thing for the work we have done. With the kind of people management is we could not take that risk.

Again I’m sorry it ended this way, because I really think it could have been avoided with just a little effort and actually management showing they cared about the employees just a little bit.

And i did tell everyone bye on Friday, and left all the things i gave to them with them. This idea was also suggested to us by coach, so i find it kind of funny seeing the comments he made about us in the paper. He has been one of the ones that have told us lies and kept us here so he can look good on the resume. Why should i bash him it would not matter his favorite players (Kevin, Sefton, and Kiko) are still there for him to play favorites with.

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

Snub Weekend

2009-03-29T16:34:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

So I said I would talk about my personal experience of the NCAA tournament, but first I must speak my mind on the all-star game today. A couple of my teammates got snubbed for the game.

I will make the case for Drew first. Drew is first in blocks, 5th in rebounding, and 5th in evaluation in the ENTIRE LEAGUE. Not only did Drew not get picked the first time, they did not choose him the second time when Prokom’s Woods and Burke decided not to play. Now correct me if I am wrong, but we finished tied for second in the league and won the POLISH CUP. We still only get 2 players on the team, while prokom had 5 selected, and Turow had 4, and Anwil had 3. I mean that is ridiculous. The other guy who got snubbed was Skip. He is the leading scorer for again the Polish Cup champs. He was also the MVP of the cup or should have been hands down. Now I’m not going to pick people and say who should not be there because those guys put in the same hard work on the court as us. However I do think there should be a limit of games you have to play before you can be picked as an All-Star. That number should be a lot higher then just 6 games. I would not be surprised if somehow money was involved in the decisions and that would def. leave us off!! Again this won’t change anything, but I defiantly feel these guys deserved to be on the team.

The final four for the national championship in college basketball will be determined today. Drew’s old college team (Michigan State) has a chance to be one of the four. I only participated in this tournament one time, but it was by far the best time. The tournament touches so many people. It makes people who aren’t fans of basketball care about it for one month. Everybody feels out the brackets of who they think will advance to play for the championship. The tournament is set up where 65 teams play in a single elimination tournament. 35 teams are automatically in the tournament by winning there conference championship. Then the other 34 teams are picked by a committee, because of there wins during the regular season. The tournament itself is so organized.

The year we went, we were a 5 seed (the seeds range from 1-16). We started off the first round playing in Buffalo, New York. The NCAA chartered us in by plane. The first round is played in 4 days. So we played Thursday and then Saturday. We played old dominion and Maryland. We were considered the underdog against Maryland. We pulled off a big win by 3, and I actually was named player of the game. The unique thing about the games is they are played in huge arenas all around the states. These arenas can hold 50,000 people, and are often sold out. The media that surrounds the games is also very unique. During the practices you have all types of photographers and news men. After the practices you have to wait around for an hour for interviews. Some players have to do sit downs for the television while others meet in a press room to answer questions. Once we returned to campus after winning the first two games, there were even more press. We were one of the 16 teams left in the nation. We had to play the defending national champs that had 5 NBA players on the team.

The game was in St. Louis in the professional football arena. We played a great game and actually gave Florida there toughest game as they marched to the title. I fouled out on a bad call by the ref on a charge, and they hit all there free throws at the end. Like I said earlier the experience of playing in this was just fantastic. We had so many fans that traveled to the games to cheer us on and would wait in the hotels for us, and waited back home when we arrived to greet us. This tournament is followed by almost everyone in the States. I received a ton of cards and good luck notes along with congratulations. A really cool card I got was from my 7 year old cousin of mine in California. She had made a card and sent it to me for playing in the games. I mean that just shows how far the tournament reaches. It is hard to explain the excitement and the overall thrill of being there in words. It is def. something you have to experience for yourself before you completely understand the CRAZYNESS of March Madness.

We had a couple events this past week after winning the cup. The first was a dinner at “Lida” hotel. It was a brand new hotel that was not actually open to the public yet. The restaurant was very nice and the food was outstanding. We had some vegetable soup, a veal salad, a steak fillet (cooked rare, YESS) and some cake at the end. Management from the team, the town mayor, and of course the team were the ones at the dinner.

Then the very next day we celebrated with the fans. They introduced us one by one in this conference room. The fans were cheering like crazy and chanting everyone’s name. We took pictures with the trophy, received a cake, and also were given shirts that they had made for us. After that we stuck around and signed autographs and took some more pictures. It was a good day and thanks to the fans that came out!!

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

Cup Champs!!

2009-03-23T14:46:00.012+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well we have had two road trips in the last week. One for the final game of the regular season and the other for the Polish Cup, I would say they both turned out pretty successful. I guess I should point out that we took a BUS!! I know I got on some peoples nerves when I pointed out the vans, So yes we did take a BUS!!! You would be amazed at how much complaining I did not have to hear from my teammates due to this.

Sportino was the final game of the regular season for us. Going into the game we knew if we won we would be tied for 2nd place with a 16-9 record and finish in 3rd place due to the tie breaker. With knowing this we came out and built an early 26 point lead which was washed away to 6 before half. We then built it back up to 20 and won by 22 I believe. Of course a lot of guys had good games. I was not one of them. I had another pathetic game of 0-5 from the field with not really ever getting myself into the game. I did make 2 free throws! The most important thing was we finished in Third and sprayed some champagne around. Drew, Pete, and I bought some $2 champagne and had a little fun after the win.

This was by far the best road trip of the season, not only because of the win, but the food and the hotel were great as well. We stayed at a hotel that was run by 4 women. It was more like a bed and breakfast. I believe there were only 15 rooms total. Skip and I lucked out by both getting a single room. Our rooms were situated in the top floor of the second building. Not only did I not have to listen to Drew’s snoring, I could use the INTERENT!!!

But like I hinted at the food was what made this trip. The first stop on the trip was at a road side gas station and a restaurant. It also had a mini zoo. This is the second mini zoo I have seen at a stop off the road, except this place actually had some crazy animals. Monkeys, an ostrich, huge owls and it even advertised a hippo, but I have NO CLUE where they would have kept it. No we did not eat the ostrich for lunch.

I just this picture was funny!!

They had some tomato soup and chicken surprise. That is usually what we eat for lunch on road trips. We have nicknamed it chicken surprise because you never know what is inside. It could be spinach, cheese, butter, meat, or all of them. You just cut and see what pops out. The meals at the hotel reminded me of grandma’s cooking (of course not that good though). These four ladies knew how to throw down in the kitchen. They put out some big spreads for dinner and lunch the next day. The favorite dish was the cheesy potatoes with some meat in them. I think this was the reason I was not able to have a good game because I had like 4 helpings of those. I could not help myself. On the way home from sportino we made a final dinner stop at sphinx. It is a chain restaurant like Applebee’s in the states. Anytime you don’t hear Sefton complain about the food the entire trip you know you did a great job. Not talking bad about him he is just a pretty picky eater.

The weekend was started off by a bus trip to Lublin for the polish cup. A little March madness of there own here in Poland. The polish cup is where the top four teams of the regular season play in a single elimination tournament. All the other teams in the league are playing pre-playoffs, which allows for teams that did not finish in the top 8 to earn a place into the playoffs. I personally don’t believe that is a good setup, I think the top 8 teams should be rewarded in playoffs and not have to play in a 3 game series. Anything can happen in three games, but luckily we don’t have to worry about that.

We played Turow in the first game, and played really well. We shot the lights out in the first half and skip did it the whole game. He finished with 29 and hit a couple crazy shots. We trailed only one time early in the game and pretty much dominated it from there. I played pretty efficient in my 19 minutes. I shot 2-4 from 3, 4-5 from the line, 1-1 from 2. I had 12 points, 4 boards, 2 steals, and 2 assist (2 TO also). Next up was the polish champs from last year Prokom.

I doubt very many people had us winning this game. We were def. considered the underdog and the fans were for us. We played another great game offensively. We were a little short handed because Drew had a hurt ankle, but Dawid came through huge. He had prob. the best game of the season scoring 17 and playing really well on D. I scored 8 points and had 3 boards I believe. I got my hands on a lot of rebounds tipping them out. It was a great game for us on both sides of the floor. We are the only team in the league that has had the same roster from day one. I think that shows when we play, and how we play together.

That was a fun bus ride home. We stopped at a restaurant that served the biggest portions in Europe I have ever seen. One of the words translated to “poor” I believe the word was Bida?!?! We were having a field day with all that food. We also celebrated with a few drinks which made the bus ride go a little faster.

We have done all we can now, winning the first polish cup for Kotwica EVER!! NO one in their right mind picked us to win this at the start of the year. Hopefully the team will be rewarded for their efforts and hard work they have put in.

I received your comment asking to write about March madness, since we have no games this week I will give my personal experience and view of the tournament next week!.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

A STEP CLOSER!!

2009-03-15T18:06:00.002+01:00

Hello Everyone,

The latest news on the team is that we are going to finish out the season and playoffs!!!

What a terrible game for me to have a sore foot. On the last home game of the regular season none the less. We are now a step closer to top 4 with Saturday’s win. What a great game to watch, the entire team played very well. I would say we gave the fans a great show. It was a shame that my foot was swollen and sore. Would have been a great game to jack up some three’s!! It looked like Znich just gave up after halftime. We had a 15 point lead at the start of the 3rd quarter and in less then 4 minutes we were up 30. Even our young guys got to get in and play, and played pretty well at that. The fans were great with chants, songs, and confetti after the win. We now travel to sportino to close out the regular season. If we win, we will be in the top 4 which would be a great accomplishment.

The funniest thing for me was after the game when a “TMZ” (tabloid paper in the states) reporter asked for an interview. Since I did not play I knew this was going to be something about my blog. I was correct and the first question was “did you not play because of penalty?” I had no idea what he was talking about and he elaborated that I got penalty for writing my blog which is obviously not the case. I told him I only wrote the truth on my blog and did not play because of my foot. He then went on and accused me of complaining about the Sopot trip. If you read my blog no where on there did I complain about that trip last week (I did complain about the hotel, but come on you saw the pictures!), I simply pointed out the fact that we took small vans to the away games. The guy continued to get worse with his questions because I guess his “SOURCES” were telling him things, but they were pretty inaccurate. I guess I can’t blame this guy for trying to make a story for his paper.

I have come to find out I have a lot of power with this blog which is evident from our own team website coming out with a statement to save face from my last blog entry. I actually read it and was a little surprised that MY own team would kind of insult me like that. So I wrote this whole 2 page thing I was going to post on here, but I decided to take the high road on this and keep away from the battle of words on the internet. You should be proud mother!!

Skip’s Birthday was Tuesday so some of us went to grill house and bowling. We have actually eaten at the grill house like three times in the past two weeks. They usually have to call their chef back in since we don’t get there until about 8:30 after practice. I had wild hog for the first time and it was very good. It comes out looking like a hamburger. I think I would have enjoyed it with a bun and all the ingredients that make a great sandwich.

Rio bowling is the place to lace the clown shoes up. It is in the basement of a hotel by the beach. The worst thing about it is there are only 4 lanes in the place. After we waited for a lane, we made teams and started knocking down some pins. It was skip, I, and Breniu (NEVER bowled before) against Kiko, Drew, and Simon. My team ended up smashing them, and Breniu should rethink his career in basketball because he was a decent bowler. I took home the high score with a 164 while Kiko took the worst not even getting 100. Drew took home the fall of the night. On his first shot he slipped and hit the ground pretty hard, but he still managed to get a strike on the throw.

I have a done a terrible job with taking pictures lately!! I will try to get back in the habit!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Could be over!

2009-03-08T18:07:00.003+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well, we got a huge win this week! We beat Polpharma and are now tied with them in the standings. We have set ourselves up nicely for top four and home court advantage. I wish I could be more excited about this. This team has done something already that no team in kotwica history has done, from what I have been told. It does not mean much to the city or the owners. (I’m not talking about the fans here, just the ownership). I don’t want to get into details on my blog because this is not the place for that, but the ownership is trying to take advantage of the players and the team. Which I think is a travesty, considering what this team has battled through all year. Skip’s injury and we still went on an 8 game win streak, we have had 3 presidents, and we don’t even take a bus to the games anymore (we take like airport shuttle vans). We have not been paid on time one time this year, in any other job you would be hard pressed to still have employees that give 100% even with not getting paid. Like I said, I’m not going to get into details, but what they are trying to do now is beyond disrespectful, it is one thing to be struggling as a business, but it is another thing to LIE to your employees OVER and OVER and OVER!!!!

Anyway, we will know by next week what the rest of the season has in store. Until then I apologize that this is not a happy blog with photos and lame stories (or complaints)!! The link below is to the box score and some good photos, unfortunately you can’t save the photos! This was not my best game, but I did more good then harm!

www.kotwica.kolobrzeg.pl/index.php?module=subjects&func=viewpage&pageid=38#galeria

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Jazz?? really?? OK

2009-03-01T13:50:00.005+01:00

Hello Everyone,

With no league game this week it allowed for us to explore a little more of what Kolobrzeg has to offer, including an indoor gun range, my first jazz concert, and some more great food.

The gun range was fun and a cheap hour of entertainment. It is actually hooked onto the gym on back side. It is a small room with about 8 booths, with the mechanical line for the target. They weren’t real bullets, but these small metal pellets. They had a range of guns, but mostly rifles from the civil war days. All we needed to do was attach a bayonet and we would be ready to fight. They also had a small pistol which was very difficult to shoot. Skip, Drew, Kevin, and I took part in the festivities. Skip and Kevin had there own shooting contest. They have been arguing all month who is better “Kobe or Lebron” so they tried to settle it with their aim. Unfortunately it did not carry any weight and they are still having the discussion today. Without sounding too conceded, I have to admit I was the best shooter. I have the picture to prove it. I’m sure we will visit this place again. The funniest part was when we were leaving the guys who ran it wanted a group shot with us all holding the guns! I got the picture without him in it, but now that I think about it, I should have taken it with him in it.

The team was invited to a jazz concert at one of the new hotels in kolobrzeg, “Arka”. It is on the outskirts of the town and is very nice. It has an indoor tennis court, indoor swimming pool, and a rotating café on top that looks over the water and the city. The closest thing I have been to a jazz concert is eating at B.B. Kings restaurant in Memphis back in 7th grade (he sang/played jazz right?!). The concert took place in their small, but beautiful restaurant called “Impresja”. We went there straight from practice, and of course were starving. The man who gave us the tickets (he never actually told me his name) came over and offered a few suggestions on the food. He reads the blog so he wanted a good review I think!! Even if he didn’t mention anything I would have gave a great review. My food was excellent. I had lamb loins wrapped in what looked like bacon, but had a different taste then bacon. It also came with some brussel sprouts and this corn/rice/mashed potato mix (I have no idea which one it was, had a different texture similar to corn pudding) that was great! I think the only downfall was the shrimp cocktail. Drew and I were going to split it a shrimp cocktail! It was impossible because they used the small shrimp and a huge glob of dressing wrapped in a lettuce leave (you know I have to complain at least once). The jazz music was really good. I can’t say that I’m a huge jazz fan, but I did appreciate the music. I have a lot of respect for the people that can play an instrument. I can barely get by on beginner of guitar hero. My fingers were not made for instruments.

This past week was the week of Italian food. I had pizza or pasta 3 out of the 5 days. I have not eaten out for over a month before last week, so I headed to Da’ Vinci pizza for some pasta and pizza on Monday. Then Tuesday was spent at my “BUDDY” Armando’s apartment. He made some homemade pizza that of course was excellent. He has a little two year old that was a ball of energy. He chants “Kotwica” and claps his hands. Even though I don’t speak his language, he warmed up to me pretty quickly. The trick with young kids is just to dance or act like an idiot, and they will for sure laugh at you. Wednesday was the jazz concert. Thursday I headed to “Bella Vista”. Another Italian restaurant downtown, they have a sale going on where pasta is 50% off during the week day. I was able to get some tortellini with spinach and lasagna for the equivalent of like $7!!!

THE TEAM

Even though we had no game this weekend you would not be able to tell with how we practiced. We had 2 a days all week and were doing things that only the preseason is for, Circuit workouts, running like crazy, and lifting really hard. Hopefully it will help later on and not have the reverse affect of just wearing us out. When we did actually practice with the basketball, we went really hard against each other. There was a lot of tension in one of the practices where bodies were flying and fouls going on all over the place. My team won 2 out of 3, so it was a good practice for me.

We also played an exhibition game against a lower division team. I have already given my opinion on these games, but I guess I will give it again. We are playing younger kids, who may one day get to our level, but are not there yet. They had no one bigger then 6’7” which does not help our centers get better. The team turns it over a ton so we have a huge number of fast breaks that we never get in a real game. With the team we have we have two good players at every position so it is more beneficial to play each other because we can make each other better. I am not a coach yet, but that is def. going into my memory bank of something not to do. You play this game at the start of the season, not at the end with three games left ON A OFF WEEKEND!

We have one week to prepare for Polpharma, the team who just embarrassed us the first time we played. The next three games are huge, but none bigger then this one. The race for the top 4 spots is so close. We can finish anywhere between 2nd and 8th place. If we can win this week it will set us up nicely for positioning come playoff time. WE NEED A LOT OF FANS AND LOUD ONES!! That is my one request for the week!!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Back on the winning track

2009-02-22T16:03:00.006+01:00

Hello Everyone,

It seems by now that many of you have found out what is one of my major loves, FOOD! I figured there was no better place to start today then talking about food, the good and the bad.

As I wrote about last week Drew and I were still in Berlin on last Sunday. We had this plan to go to the zitadel (citadel), then to dinner and a movie. I figured this plan was going to be altered a little bit when I heard drew losing his guts around 11 am on Sunday. Apparently he had eaten something bad that night. We have lots of choices to pick from. It could have been 1 of 2 kebabs we ate, 1 of 3 bratwursts he had, dinner at “house of 100 beers”, or the late night hotdog from the subway station. He believes it was the hotdog from the subway. Some of you may be thinking it was just a hangover that was keeping him down. I know this is not the case because he did not get out of bed the entire day and slept all the way into Monday morning, only eating peanuts. No hangover would EVER keep Drew from eating.

So I was left to explore the rest of Berlin solo on Sunday because there was no way I was staying in the room that smelled like death. I headed out to find some lunch and stopped a small diner on the street. The lady whipped me up a nice sized piece of pork with some fresh French fries and some kind of salad (I stayed away from that). After, lunch I was heading to the 9th best thing to visit in Berlin, The citadel. I first had to do my teammate duty and pick up a huge gallon of water for Drew (this really was like a valentines date).

I’m not real sure why the citadel was ranked the 9th best thing in Berlin. It was huge fortress that was built back when they had kings. To me it did not have much glamour and was more of just some big brick building, but obviously there was a lot of history there. It was surrounded by a mot that led to a bigger water source. I think there were some shows or tours you could take, but with it being a Sunday it was downscaled. I just walked around looking at everything, and going into places I’m not sure I was suppose to. There were no signs not to enter so I was exploring everything. It took me back to my childhood days of hide and seek. I was going around looking for great places to hide. I did find some hidden stairways, but they no longer led to anything. It was snowing most of the day and after being outside for a couple hours I figured it was time to head to dinner and a movie.

I was still destined to eat at Tony Romas’ restaurant. I looked like one of those lonely guys who just got dumped on Valentines Day and was soaking it up at the local bar. I was the only one in the downstairs bar. The main restaurant was on the second floor. I ate my meal pretty much in silence while watching Manchester United (soccer team) run over whomever they were playing. The only people I saw were the ones heading to the restroom to wash all that rib juice off their hands. The meal consisted of a nice portion of baby back ribs and steak. They also have some of the best coleslaw I have had. I just recently started liking coleslaw (within the past two years), and it is quickly moving up my favorite foods list. I even splurged for some dessert, a skillet brownie toped with some vanilla ice cream and what looked like an entire can of whipped cream (50 euros later I was full). This is the perfect time to answer the question about how I eat all this and keep it off.

Very simple answer, lose around 700-1500 calories in morning workout and then evening practice lose 1000-2000 calories again. A couple of guys wear the heart monitors during practice that give the calorie countdowns, along with the heart rates. The real question is what I will do when I no longer play, because I hate running just to run. I need a purpose like score a goal or hit a ball. Hopefully my local recreation center will have some competition for me to continue playing for fun.

The Game

We finally got back into the win column, although it wasn’t all that pretty again. The team we were playing was a little shorthanded considering they just cut there top 3 scorers, most likely due to money problems. Atlas came out shooting pretty well in the second quarter and we actually were down by 10 at halftime. We played much better in the second half building a 10 point lead of our own and winning by around 14. Kevin was one assist shy of a triple double, and Skip, Drew and Sefton all had pretty good games.

Personally, I am beyond frustrated with myself right now. I have shot 4-15 in the last 4 games behind the arc. They are shots that I should be knocking down. I have had some trouble lately getting warmed up in the games. I’m still having a tough time adjusting to only playing 20 minutes or less a game. I was 0-2 this game with 2 points from the foul line in about 15 minutes of play. I had 1 steal and 2 charges. I thought charges counted as steals, but I guess I was wrong because they only had me down for 1.

We now have two weeks off, with an all-star game being played next week. Drew is playing for the international side while Kiko is playing for the polish side. I think the town is about a 6 hour train ride. I’m trying to talk some of the players into going for the weekend.

These photos are all from Berlin! our hotel, bratwurst stand, restaurant we ate at, a random Toys R us, and the stadium!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

My First European Futbol Match

2009-02-15T14:35:00.002+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Things have started to get a little mundane here. The only thing that happened this week was it snowed twice. This reminded me a little of Indiana. It has not snowed but a couple times in Kolobrzeg. Now in the middle of February it snows multiple times.

We headed to Turow on Thursday for the game that would be played Friday. The trip was about 6 hours and we stopped outside of Berlin for burger king. We cut through Germany on the auto-ban since the town Turow plays in is real close to the boarder. We stayed at a pretty nice hotel with BIG beds and great wireless internet (the two most important things). They also had some great food for us, with chicken and fish the first night. The gym they play in is smaller then it looks on television, but they packed that place. The fans were loud the entire game with chants and cheers.

We came out and shot ourselves in the foot early again with missed open shots and turnovers. We went to halftime down 12. We made a run to get back in the game and cut the lead to 4 a couple times. It seemed like every time we would get close they would knock down a big shot or we would make a mistake on defense. I had an ok game scoring 11 points 2-6 from three. I still have been struggling a little bit from the outside missing some open threes I don’t usually miss. I got some confidence back after knocking the 2 down in the second half.

They are a good team in a tough place to play. I defiantly thought we could beat them with the good week of practice we had. Every team has raised their game up now with the season coming to an end and playoffs approaching. We are defiantly going to have to raise ours up. The good thing is the team below us helped us out by loosing. So we are still in fourth with 3 home games coming up. I hope we can get a lot of loud fans to come to the game as we need some big wins.

Drew and I came to Berlin after the game with coach. We just wanted to have a weekend away and see something different. We booked a pretty cheap hotel that coach thought was in the red light district. Luckily it was about a block outside of it. It looked very shady from the outside when we pulled up. It turned out to be a steal. The room is pretty big and the location is awesome. I guess there is something to be said for a little time and patience on the internet.
On Saturday we were heading to some citadel to look at when we ran into a bunch of soccer fans on the train. They said they were heading to the Hertha Berlin vs. Munich match. The game was sold out as it was 2nd place vs. 3rd place, winner takes first. We decided to go and try to scalp some tickets. Turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. The game goes into the top 5 funniest events I have been to. The tickets were right in the middle of the “crazy” fan section. They were waving the flags all game, chanting, and singing. Hertha won 2-1 which is who we were cheering for if not for the simple fact we did not want beer poured on us. It was a great game in a great atmosphere in a great stadium.

I was surprised to see that tailgating in the parking lot was not done here. We were at the game about 2 hours early, and of course there are a lot of people there, but they are just buying from the vendors. Then I realized why, most Europeans take the train to the games, where as in America every one drives their gas guzzlers to the game which allows for that tailgating scene I’m used to. Of course this is only one game I have been to and it could be different at other stadiums and other countries. The thing that surprised me the most was just how dedicated the fans our. After the victory we saw 2 grown men crying, and the fans stay 30 minutes after the game to perform more chants and dance with the players as they came over to the section. It was really a cool scene. Little did we know, the real adventure was starting after the game.

When you sell out a stadium with 70,000 plus people they have to go somewhere. Like I stated above most of these people took the train to the game. As you filtered down to the train station you saw security trying to control the flow, but with no luck at all as people were pushing and weaving there way through. When the trains did come everyone then played “how many sardines can I get in the can”. Drew and I finally shoved our way on to a train and headed to find dinner.

We were walking through Potsdamer Platz, which is a main shopping and entertainment scene in East Berlin, trying to find dinner. We stumbled upon one of Drew’s favorite, a small kiosk grilling up bratwurst. We grabbed one of those for the walk while we kept searching out for a restaurant. We ended up eating at a place called “house of 100 beers”. They had some authentic Berlin dishes, or at least that is what it was advertised as. I had some great French onion soup, and pork schnitzel with mushroom sauce. It was a great meal and relatively inexpensive for a big city.

We are going to try and catch the movie “international” tonight and enjoy some Tony Roma’s, Mmmm steak and ribs!

I will hopefully be able to upload some pictures and video from the trip on Tuesday or Wednesday so hang in there till then!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Tough Week

2009-02-08T18:30:00.001+01:00

Hello Everyone,

It was a very disappointing week for a couple reasons. I’m not sure how many of you got to watch the super bowl, but I had the chance. I thought it was a great game, even though I missed the whole fourth quarter (which was the quarter that made it great). Anyway there was a commercial that caught my eye. Denny’s (a somewhat popular restaurant in America) was giving away free “grandslams”.

The image on the left is the ‘grandslam”. All these items may not look like much when they are by themselves, but put them all together and you have a glorious breakfast dish. Apparently my family and friends don’t appreciate these food items. None of them went to Denny’s and devoured this breakfast. At this current moment I would pay upwards of $30 for a breakfast like this. All though you think I may be crazy because you can make a breakfast like this at home for like $5. I am lazy and can not find all the ingredients for this breakfast here in Poland. I may be wrong and I’m sure my polish friends will correct me if I am, but I can’t find a breakfast place here that serves anything close to this. My only request is please don’t take for granted all the wonderful breakfast places we have in America, IHOP, Cracker Barrel, Denny’s, Bob Evans, and all those small town dinners. Man I’m salivating all over my keyboard on to the next subject.

The Team

It was a terrible week for me as I was trying to heal my foot from constant pain. We finally got it where it was not hurting so bad and had my first practice on Thursday. Just as things were turning around for me on the injury front, I decided to go and punch the rim, literally. I was attempting to block a shot and guess I forgot I was under the rim. My hand felt like it hit an iron circle! It bruised up pretty bad and I had difficult time shooting and dribbling on Friday. This def. goes down as one of the top five dumbest things I have done in a practice.

If the first two paragraphs were not disappointing enough, I now have to explain our first home game since December 20th. I could just say we lost and end it there, but the way we lost just sickens us.

The main stat that sticks out is that we turned the ball over 23 times. The 23rd time was with 6 seconds left in the game down one. Meaning we did not even get a shot at winning the game. Another stat is that the other team made more free throws then we attempted. With these two stats we should not even of had a chance at winning.

We played pretty solid defense holding them to only 64 points. We just were never able to get anything going with our shots. I was 1-6 from 3 and 0-2 from 2. After watching the tape today, they were good shots, shots that I usually knock down. I had a solid game defensively, having 4 steals and 4 rebounds.

This makes 3 losses in a row. On the bright side, we are still in 4th place with 5 games left. This week of practice will be very important as we try to get back to playing like US. I think the team has lost some focus that we will need to get back. It is not time to hit the panic button, but it is time to buckle down and get back to business. We have a tough road game against Turow on Saturday.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Should of had this one!

2009-02-02T13:53:00.007+01:00

Hello Everyone,

I will start off by saying hello to all my new polish readers! I saw that the article was run in the sports paper and also online. This probably means an extra 3 people now read my very unimportant words. Although, I did have a young fan come up to me at the charity game and say he reads it and that “it is great!” so thanks for that.

So since I have all these new polish readers, what is the deal with the pillows here? They are huge rectangles with very little “fluff” or padding. This has been my experience in every hotel along with the pillows that were in my apartment when I arrived. Every morning when I wake, my neck feels like it has been riding “The Beast” roller coaster all night! I’m sure most of the hotels we stay at our budget friendly to save the team money, but some of these pillows are worst then a cardboard box. In the states when you go to a hotel it is usual an upgrade from your normal bed. They have the best sheets, best pillows, and best comforters. One would want to spend weeks at some of these hotel beds. I’m not trying to sound like the spoiled American because trust me there are some bad hotels in America as well, but is it that hard to get some “fluff” in the pillow?

Okay on to the important stuff!

The Team

We spent the entire week practicing outside. Well technically it was inside at the high school gym, but there was very little difference from the cold outside and the cold in the gym. They rented out the gym the entire week to what looked like a job fair or some kind of conference. Of course this would happen the week of one of the most important games. We were unable to get any extra shots all week in the morning and the high school gym does not have the correct three point line. So instead of getting extra shots we were able to practice on our hand ball skills.

We left on Saturday for the game via a rental van and coach’s car. It was about a 4 hour drive to Sopot. We stopped about halfway for a touch of America, where Drew and Sefton were able to get their two favorite fast food chains in America! Pizza Hut (Drew’s) and KFC (sefton’s). We then proceeded to check into the hotel. The only way you would be able to find this hotel is by typing in “cheapest hotel in Poland”. This place looked straight out of 1950’s.

The pictures should back this claim up. I was going to give the hotel a little credit and say that the bathroom had at least been renovated, but apparently they forgot one of the most important parts, the shower head. When you turned on the shower, it sprayed about 15 different ways and none of the ways were straight. There was still hope for this place as the receptionist said they had wireless internet and gave us a password. Really that is all you need from a hotel is good internet and a good bed. Since the bed was out of the question with another one made for people that are 6 foot and under we were left with “MORZE” the password that would make everything ok with the hotel. Well as you can see how this theme is going the password left us hanging and we were left with entertainment from our 1964 TV, with its messed up picture and polish shows that we can’t understand.

THE GAME

We got started very quickly hitting our first 5 shots and building a quick 12 point lead. The second quarter was a back in forth battle with us going to the locker room up 7. In the third they quickly erased that lead and built one of there own going up 7 before the 4th. This is where the game gets weird. I don’t want to criticize the refs again because honestly they officiated a good game, but they did make one call that you just can’t make. We were up 5 with 30 seconds and they called an intentional foul on an and 1 lay-up. He made the free throw and they got the ball back and they scored which tied the game. It took overtimes to decide and eventually we came up on the losing end. I thought Drew and Kiko played really well. Drew was battling there big men all night and kiko hit some big shots. Kevin also had a really good game running the point.

Personally, I did not have much time to do a lot. I hit my first three of the game and went 1-2 for the game and 1-1 from 2’s. I injured my foot that held me out for two practices and put me in jeopardy to play the game. I took a couple of injections to take away the pain. This might have been some of the reason I did not play very much, but I felt great out there.

After a long road stint we finally play a game at home on Saturday, which is must win if we want to stay in the top 4.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Charity GAME Fun!!

2009-01-25T17:01:00.007+01:00

Hello Everyone,

This week started out with ANOTHER 5 hour bus trip for ANOTHER game on the road. The bus trips don’t seem to be getting any shorter, but they do seem to be going by faster now that over half the team has PSP’s (Playstation Portable). We all have the same game and can play against each other on the bus. There have been some pretty heated games. Breniu (our young Point Guard) seems to be winning a lot, but we all think he is cheating a little bit. I’m a little bias but I’m going to go ahead a say that I was the best! I’m thinking we should set up a psp tournament with the other teams in the league. Kotwica Sea wizards would definitely take gold.

We stayed outside the city in a small country hotel. When the name is translated it is something like “the stables”. They have a bunch of property where they train and keep horses. It had about 20 rooms in the two story building. It had a small restaurant where we ate our meals which were very good. The main problem with this place was the beds. I think they designed them for the jockeys who were training the horses. If you were 6 foot or over you would have a terrible time trying to sleep. They had a wooden foot rest at the end, and there was no way to stretch out. Since most of the players on this team are 6’4” or taller it made for a long night. This may have played a role into how bad we played.

The GAME

We were outplayed, out coached, out hustled, out rebounded, and whatever other outs you can come up with. They played very aggressive and built a 10 point lead very quickly. We were throwing the ball to them on almost every offensive possession. We shot terrible like 5-24 from three. They did not shoot very well from three either but their big men killed us. Three of their big men were very close to double doubles. We were making mistakes defensively that we have not made all year. At times we showed flashes of our old selves but just could not overcome the deficit and ended up losing by double digits.

Personally, I felt like I was just floating out there. I had taken some medicine for my leg and I think it messed with me. I went 1-3 for two points, had a couple assists and rebounds. I did not play very many minutes, but I gave coach no reason to play me. This was probably my worst game this season. I think we all took accountability for the loss and we watched the film and will improve from the loss.

It does not get any easier in the seven games we have left, starting with next Sunday in Sopot to play the first place team in the league, Prokom. We played them tough at home going into overtime and really handing them the game in overtime. It will not be easy going into their gym, but I think we have shown we can win on the road.

We had a charity game on Saturday in a town about 40 minutes away. It is not exactly what we wanted to do on our weekend off, but we made the most of it. It was nice to have a chance to get the bad taste from the defeat we suffered earlier in the week. We played Sportino, which is a team we play again in 3 or 4 weeks.

We went there in the morning and had a practice with the kids, running them through some drills. My station was dribbling with Kevin, skip, and Shimy. I think the kids enjoyed themselves which is what counts.

During halftime of the game they had dunk and three point contests. Skip and Sefton did some dunks for the crowd. I shot in the three point contest and made 10 out of 15, which was good enough for the victory. Then at the end of the third quarter they had me shoot free throws against a fan, only I was blind folded. I really thought I would knock one down, but it didn’t happen. I received a nice bag pack that I’m sure I will regift to one of my siblings.

The game went well for us as we won by 10 with a majority of our players not playing. Kevin did not play in the second half, Dawid didn’t play at all as he is still trying to get his ankle 100%, Captain Tom only played like 5 minutes, and skip and drew set most of the second half as well. A lot of them did not want to play because the game did not mean anything. I was having fun, but was not planning on playing 36 minutes and I am hurting today. I played pretty well scoring 20 points, and having 2 dunks. That is the first time in my career that I ever had 2 dunks in one game. I wished these stats counted for the league stats that would have been a nice game for me. We stuck around after the game taking photos and signing autographs for the kids and other fans. Overall it was a fun day and got our minds of the loss!

Until next time!

“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal”

This is BC gone for now

Seven in a row, the hard way!

2009-01-18T17:59:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

For the seven people that voted for “more pictures and less stories” this might not be the post for you this week! I’ll start with this week’s game since it was a low key week.

The Game

We made the five hour trip to Poznan, which is a fairly big city. The bus was nice this time with a mini flat screen and some Vegas style neon lights on the inside. Of course since we splurged on the bus we had to stay at a hotel that was built before they knew how to construct balconies or have internet. The room had a door for the balcony, but there was maybe 1 foot of space. Drew labeled it as the suicide balcony because that is the only thing you could have accomplished off of it.

PBG is a team that is struggling in the league. They are 6-13 I believe, which is crazy to me because they have some talent on that team. They have 3 solid big men, a strong 3, and 2 solid guards. We jumped on them very early going up by 17 at half. We played great D in the first half and were making a lot of our shots. We like to play in bigger arenas. This was a nice sized arena that resembled Illinois University’s gym. They had very little fans that showed up. In fact I think the kotwica fans outnumber them or at least were 2 times louder. Thanks a lot to the all the fans that made the trip and supported us.

The second half was a very different story. I think the refs made a decision at halftime to let PBG get back in the game. I’m not a player that blames refs for wins or loses very often, but it definitely looked like these refs had some money on the game and needed to cover the spread. I will just throw out a couple numbers and you can make a pretty solid judgment. They shot 43 free throws, they called over 40 fouls total, and we had 2 guys foul out and 2 more with 4 fouls. On top of that I received my first technical ever (I think). I know I did not have any at butler or last year. Apparently he thought I insulted him, which was not the case at all. I told him I was pushed with a curse word before it, and he took it as I was calling him something else. When Thomas went over to talk to him about it apparently the ref said “why are you guys so mad? You’re winning, and you have won a ton of games all ready”. That is just amazing that he would actually say that. That is enough on the refs as we escaped with a four point win so I will take it.

It was a very balanced scoring with 5 players in double digits. I led the team with 13 points (2-3, 1-2 (3’s) 6-7 (foul line), and a couple assists. I hit 4 free throws at the end to seal the game for us. I have to lead the league in four point plays (making the three pointer and getting fouled) as I had another one this game. That would bring my total to 5 or 6 which is pretty good.

There were a couple positives from the game. We are 100% again. Skip had an effective game and looks like his finger is healed, while dawid also was very effective in his minutes having some finishes down low and hitting a three. Drew held the leading scorer in the league well below his average.

We play on the road again on Wednesday, shooting for our eighth straight win!

Since not much happened during the week I figured I would respond to the questions of comparing the Swedish league vs. the polish league in my opinion.

The easy answer right away would be the polish league is stronger. I feel the main reason for this is because how many Americans are allowed to play. In Sweden a team can only have 2, I believe in Poland you can have 4 or maybe more. I’m not saying American players are better then polish players, but I think when you allow more Americans it strengthens the whole league because of the effect it has from brining them in. The more Americans allowed means less spots for polish players, if teams bring them in, which means polish players must fight for the remaining spots. This makes them better as they are improving there game to take those spots (Hopefully that makes some sense).

A big difference in the two leagues is I see Sweden as more of a guard league, where I see Poland as more of a big man league. There are a lot more 6’10” (208 in Europe) and up players in Poland where it was rare to have that in Sweden. A lot of the five men in Sweden I would compare to G. Reese from AZS.

As far as the gyms go in the two countries they are very similar, smaller gyms with a lot of fans in them. In NCAA the gyms were all much bigger. Most gyms were the size of Anwil if not bigger. At butler the gym could hold somewhere around 11,000 people. I think the polish fans cheer louder and bring more noise makers to the games (which I like). I also think polish fans have a lot more songs and victory cheers. I didn’t hear anyone singing at the games in Sweden (no Sialala lalalala). I think the one big difference from the NCAA is when the home team is shooting free throws everyone is quiet. Where here they are clapping or banging the drums during free throws.

Hopefully that gives you some in sight into the two leagues from my view point. I can’t pick one league over the other because the fans in Sodertalje were very kind and seem to appreciate my game, where as the fans in Kotwica have also showed the same support!!

I was wondering if someone could help me out on where these two restaurants are as I would like to test them out and give you my feed back "dramat" "brovaria". Also I have eaten at the grill house a couple times now and it is one of my favorites.

Until next time!

“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal”

This is BC gone for now

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

2009-01-12T02:31:00.003+01:00

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

2009-01-05T02:19:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Another year, another country, and MORE fireworks, I’m talking double the fireworks of Sweden. Poland is crazy with them as well, lighting them 2 feet from the crowd. Morgan is here celebrating New Years with me again. We went downtown by the park where it seems all of Kolobrezeg gathers. It was fun yelling and giving out hugs, also if you could enjoy the fireworks that made it into the air they were nice, but a majority of the time we were watching the ones that did not make it in the air. Amateur fireworks are dangerous enough, but add in that most of the people that were shooting them off were not sober. Drew took a bottle rocket to the shoulder, and many others looked like they took some to the face. Luckily it was no one else from the team.

On January 2, we headed to Germany to play two games. This trip had bad written all over it before we ever left. We had only had one practice since the break and then we were playing two games. If rust would have been the only problem we could have dealt with it a lot better, but the trip itself is what turned disastrous. The bus arrived about 15 minutes late for departure, but the real surprise was when we got on the bus and the male volleyball team had the whole front area. Now when I say male volleyball team I’m sure you imagine some tall, young, athletic guys. STOP that vision right now. This team looked like the bad version of a YMCA rec league (the old man’s division). More on the volleyball team later. Now we focus on the bus. I would have rather rode a high school bus. This bus smelled of sweaty clothes that have been left out for a week, we were cramped with very little leg room for anyone (I couldn’t even take my shoes off because the floor hadn’t been cleaned since the bus was put into operation), and it averaged 30 MPH. I am not exaggerating when I say 30 MPH. The trip was supposed to take 7 hours, which is not all that close to begin with after we just had a full day of travel to get back to Poland. The trip took 11 in a half hours! With stops almost every 2 hours.

We stopped at some of the worst spots as well. We stopped at a rest park, well a rest park that had not been maintained since the ice ages, and it felt that way inside this place. It was absolutely freezing. I think most prisoners would decline this place. I can’t imagine how bad it had to be for Morgan. These stops were all in Germany so I guess the rumor is true that Poland has better bathrooms. Germany was trying to fix their image of bathrooms and this was obvious on the next stop. You had to pay for the restroom this time. Since I did not have any euros we borrowed money from the coach. From Morgan’s report back it seems that Poland still has better bathrooms.

At this point you might be thinking that this trip doesn’t sound that bad Brandon? It gets better. Since we arrived so late we were not able to have a practice which means we still had only had one practice to play two games. The next morning we loaded the bus so we could at least have an hour shoot around. That hour turned into a half hour real quick when the bus driver got lost on the way to the gym. Instead of a half hour trip to the gym it turned into an hour trip and for some reason we also had no heat the whole trip. Then after the short shoot around we had to walk to the bus. We all figured this would be a one or two block walk. It was like half a mile which again you are probably saying to yourself, “Brandon I used to walk 9 miles to school uphill”. Well add that it was freezing and 1-2 inches of snow on the ground. Now were getting close to game time.

We had to go to the gym early to watch the volleyball team play. I believe they were supposed to play at 5:30. We were not playing in the same gym that shoot around was in, which was a big problem for the bus driver because we got lost again. We arrived at the gym at 5:50. The funny thing was the team that they were playing were not even prepared to play. They had no nets or polls up. This is where the story gets kind of comical. There was nothing official about this volleyball game. They had no real refs, they did not even have correct volleyball lines, and the net they put up was three badminton nets tied together to make one with a gaping hole in the middle where they were tied together. This was seriously a YMCA rec. league game. Who travels 11 hours for a rec. league game? I don’t want to sound like I don’t like the volleyball team because there are some big fans of the team that came on the trip and played. I just found it very unusual that you would travel that far for just one game that did not count for anything. The team is not in any league or anything like that either back in poland. The good thing was the polish team won, unlike ourselves.

The GAMES

We were very rusty, which can be expected after a nine day break and one practice, we were all pretty off on our shooting the first game except sefton. He played a really good all around game with some steals, dunks, and threes. He was the one bright spot of the team. We played padoborn, which is a team we had already beaten in the preseason and should have again. Personally, I felt alright but my jump shot did not. I was 0-7 from three. I scored 7 points, and added 4 steals. We were defiantly suffering from some long road trips we have put our bodies through as everyone looked a step slower.

The second game was a lot better but we still lost. We had a chance to win at the end. We were down one with 26 seconds and Kevin missed both free throws. We tried to foul but for some reason the German refs would not give us the call. They waited till the guy cut to the basket for a lay-up then called an intentional foul. That pretty much sealed the game.

If you just strictly looked at the stat sheet one could see a good game was played by both teams. Both teams had 5 players with over 10 points and no one with more then 20. Also, both teams shot over 50% from the field for the game. I had 12 points on 3-5 from 2 and 2-4 from three.

I think the entire team is happy to have this trip over with as it was filled with many problems and very uncomfortable rides, but of course we could not just come home. We had to drive through a blizzard that slowed our bus to almost a crawl. The one positive to take from the trip is the food was pretty good.

We had a couple good meals at the hotel, then we stopped at American diner after the first game, but it was not anywhere close to a real American diner. The food was ok, but again we are back in Europe where they don’t believe in beef products. The burger they gave us was the cafeteria beef. I was hoping that they could make a good shake, but they failed on this as well. I might as well have ordered strawberry milk. The next town we played in we had Chinese buffet (before the game). I have yet to have bad food at a Chinese restaurant over here. After the game we were served pasta with no forks. We had to take the lid and scoop it out (just some more great planning that was featured on this trip).

Before you walk away from this post saying “Brandon you are just one big complainer”, I don’t see it like that. I see it more as looking at the situation strictly from pro’s and con’s, and there were very little if any pro’s on this trip. I believe pretty much the entire team would agree with me that this trip was not necessary. I can safely say I am ready to get back to Poland and start a routine again, and playing games that matter.

We have 10 games left in polish league before the start of playoffs. It starts next Sunday with a TV game with our biggest rival AZK.

A pet shop also selling wedding dresses! (Morgan was thinking about buying this wedding dress, esp. if you got the two cages for free)

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Merry Christmas and Happy NEW YEAR!!

2008-12-18T14:00:00.011+01:00

Hello Everyone,

On Wednesday we traveled about forty minutes to the next big city that has a team. AZK is the team we went to watch. They are our biggest rivals and you could tell as fans threw some popcorn at us as we walked in. It looked like a huge news story because when we walked into the gym there were all these camera guys snapping photos. They were probably tying to get the before shot as they anticipated fans jumping us. Luckily there were no problems, but we did leave the game with about 3 minutes left to make sure. They were playing Polpharma which is 1st in the league with a record of 11-3. They are now 11-4 as AZK beat them pretty soundly. Since I had no opinion on who won, I can honestly say that if the refs are that one sided when we play them they will be tough to beat. Polpharma had 3 guys fouled out before the fourth quarter even began including there point guard. The video below is to show everyone how loud the fans cheer over here. It is defiantly a different environment then the NBA. You can compare it to the student sections at colleges, but I think they are a little louder here and they usually pound a drum or drums all the time.

We went a little early so we could walk around the new mall they just opened about 2 weeks ago. It was very nice and had a huge food court. We decided to get a little taste of home right before we flew home so we went to Pizza Hut and had Burger King Shakes for dessert.

Drew and I found a small Irish bar that has become our new hang out spot. It is right behind the galleria downtown in kolobrzeg. Skip, drew, and I had a drink there on Tuesday after some shopping and then headed to Pizza King where they have some really good nuggets. The week flew by as we are all excited about the break and going home.

The Game

Tonight we played Gornik. They were 0-5 on the road and we did not want to give them their first win. We started the game pretty slowly, but turned it on in the second quarter building a 13 point lead going into halftime. I did not help build that lead at all. I had a horrendous first half going 0-4 from the field a picking up three fouls. I'm going to blame it on being so fired up to come home. They made a run in the third like all teams do in basketball, but we were able to make some key buckets to keep the lead around ten the whole third quarter. I finally showed up making 4-6 threes in the second half and going 5-6 from the foul line. I also picked up two big charges when they were making a run.

Drew had a huge game against Barro, who played for Marquette a couple years ago. He finished with 12 points, 14 rebounds, and 3 blocks. Kevin also had a huge game picking up 14 assists and adding to his total on steals with 4.

We had a traditional Christmas dinner after the game with people from the team and the city mayor. They had a huge spread, but mostly of food I could not eat. They had a lot of raw fish products and some periogies*spelling filled with mushrooms and cabbage.

One of the traditions is to give every one a square piece of dry bread kind of like communion. They have a picture of an angel and you go around taken a piece from other peoples and wishing a Merry Christmas. My objective was to take the smallest piece from others, as there were like 25 people with bread and give out the biggest so I could run out quickly. Somehow this plan backfired and I ended up with quite a lot left over.

We are officially first in the league in points which is huge for this team as they have never finished higher then seventh I believe. We have already surpassed the win total of all of last year.

I have been able to pick up my scoring, my 2 percent field goals, and free throw percentages the last 5 games. I have averaged around 15 points the last 5 games, and we have won them all.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy new year as I will not be posting again until 2009. I'm going to be enjoying this break!!

Until next time!

Did you know a rat can last longer without water then a camel?

This is BC gone for now

ONE WEEK UNTIL USA!

2008-12-13T23:38:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

GAME

We played Sportino at home last Saturday. They were not a strong team, only winning 5 games in the first round. These teams are always the hard games to get up for and plus there had been some problems from the front office. After a very bad first quarter we found ourselves down by 10 points.

We had a decent second quarter retaking the lead by four points into halftime. No one was happy with how we had played in the first half and it showed in the locker room at halftime. We were able to take control of the game early in the third quarter and coasted to an easy 20 point victory.

I had another strong performance scoring 14 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal. I also had one of my superman dives that I was so known for at Butler. The ball had gotten tipped out from our basket to halfcourt. They had two guys running for it and would have had a 2 on nothing fast break. I sprinted just enough to beat the guy and do an all out dive knocking the ball out of bounds. That seemed to fire us up a little bit and we made a run after it.

It was another long week of waiting where I swear I get sorer then if we were playing every other day. The two juniors who are on our team had a couple games on Monday and Thursday. Some of the teammates and I went and cheered them on as they annihilated two teams.

Drew and I also checked out a small place under his apartment called Nottingham, where they had a pool table and a bowling alley. We played some pool on the table that was decaying in front of our eyes. The pockets were sagging and would barely catch the pool balls. Some shots would require the other one to stand in the corner so the cue ball would not take out the bottles of alcohol on the wall. You also had to be careful of the office which was in the small corner with no wall covering it. I don’t thing too many people would be interested in stealing the apple I mac computer. I’m not talking about the new ones, I’m talking about the one I used in 1st grade where you could only put a floppy disk in and the mouse was just one button or a joy stick.

Food was pretty good this week, I ate most of my lunches at millennium (hard to pass on those $3 lunches). I also ate a couple meals out. One at a place called Da Vinci, I believe I mentioned it before when we ate there with Drew’s parents. They have really good pastas and pizza. Then I also ate at a place inside the mall downtown where we enjoyed a nice kebab plate.

They have a Christmas market in the middle of the city with a bunch of vendors selling many things that you will never need. One of the vendors looked like he was trying to get you to break his toys in order to get a sale. He had some of those toys that crawl or move on there own. He set them in the middle of the sidewalk, and it gets dark here at like 4 PM (pitch black). We found it rather entertaining while we were enjoying our meal to look out the window and see the people come within centimeters of stepping on the little toy soldier. Yes, that is the extent of my excitement for the week!!

GAME 2

We played the TV game on Sunday which was a big match up as we played Anwil who is one spot ahead of us in the standings. The game was on there court, which is the nicest “arena” we have played in. I put arena in quotations because it actual was an arena. The place resembled some college venues I have played in. All the other gyms we have played in so far are smaller then Indiana high school gyms.

We came out on fire playing well on both ends of the floor building an early 15 point lead. They did not really like that and made a run of there own and we went into halftime up two. After half we kept up our defense and our two guards had great games. Kevin scoring 25 and kiko scoring 23. our big guys played a heck of game defensively.
I played an alright game scoring 6 points, 6 rebounds, and 3 steals. I was 0-2 from three which I hate, but did make 4-4 from the line. This game was a second chance for us as we laid an egg on the last national televised game.

We are on a 4 game winning streak and can close it out with a win on Friday before we fly home. We are now in fourth place and one game back from third.

I am posting this blog while we are on the road so sorry for lack of pictures. Also next weeks post will only have the results from next Friday’s game as I will not be writing while at home. I will be taking all my time eating everything I can!!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

HUGE MEAL-REAL COOL

2008-12-04T20:11:00.006+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well last week was filled with two a day practices and everyone sharing his opinion on what we think is wrong. Whenever you lose 4 out 5 games crisis sets in a little. Injuries this week did not help anything. Our other 3 man hurt his knee, jumping up to the bleachers above for a soccer ball in the morning workout (he said he was trying to be spider-man), and Skip our starting two man fractured his thumb. I do not think it should set us back too much as we still have the pieces we need to win. I’m sure everyone will be a little tired for Tuesday’s game after the 17 hour bus trip.

YES, 17 hours! That is like traveling from Indianapolis to Daytona Beach on a bus to play one game. I could fly home and be enjoying a home cook meal in the same amount of time. We stopped about half way in a town called Lodz. They are home to the “biggest mall in Europe”. It did not seem like that though, maybe because it did not have a water park and its own roller coaster like Mall of America. It was called manufactora which I’m assuming is like manufacturing and it looked like the place used to be an old factory. It had some Christmas decorations around and an ice ring outside. We ate at some small polish restaurant in the mall, and had to get some pizza hut pizza for desert. I feel like I’m still in high school sometimes on these road trips when they preorder our food for us. They had ordered fries and chopped up chicken, of course I’m sure by now the readers could have guessed that it was chicken. I forgot the camera on the bus so no pictures of the mall sorry.

Poland is starting to get in the Christmas spirit with lights and decorations. I’m sure the lights are all going up at home as well. I was able to talk to a lot of my family on thanksgiving which was nice, but also stinks when I have to hear about the food. My thanksgiving lunch consisted of tuna salad, but I must say I do make some great tuna salad. Growing up you always feel like the world kind of stops on thanksgiving, your not suppose to work and just eat and watch football. Sometimes I wish it was still that way! I know I was one of the lucky kids whose parents were always off. I think the tradition I miss most is going to pick out a tree the day after thanksgiving. We used to go to Miller’s tree farm in Monticello and cut down our own. They had the petting zoo with the “reindeers” and the warm apple cider. It was always a great day and something I would like to carry on to my children. I have to give you an A plus for that mother!! Hopefully my house has big enough ceilings because I know we used to try and get the biggest one whether it fit or not (our family’s competitive spirit).

The Game

The game was great! The team came ready to play even though we were missing two players. The level of the team was not as high as in previous weeks, but we did not let that affect us. Kevin had a really nice game distributing the ball to everyone. He ended with 11 assists. I had my best game of the year scoring 27 points on 9-14 (4-8 threes) shooting and 5-6 from the foul line. Also adding 3 rebounds, 2 assists, and 1 steal in 34 minutes of play. We ended up wining by around 20 or 30. I really needed this game for my confidence and also my percentages. Before this game I was under 55% from the foul line (very uncharacteristic) and like less then 20% from 2’s. I had not shot that many, but still those are now up to respectable levels.

After the game we had a feast at the hotel. It was actually the biggest meal we have had consisting of zurek (traditional polish soup) and salad, with some beef stroganoff. Then they brought out some chicken and potatoes as well. We went next door to the restaurant/pub/club for a little celebrating. In the basement they had a little dance floor and the DJ was singing while playing on the keyboard. They were like polish folk songs with people dancing all crazy, very comical like usual.

It was about a 7 hour bus trip the next day from Znicz to Warsaw. I slept through most of it, but I was awake when the bus drivers got lost and we ended at a place with four houses around and a small bar/store, the guy behind the counter asked “well, I bet you guys have never been to a shit hole like this before?” The whole team basically was using the restroom outside in the forest instead of the place. They had a raw fish with no plastic or anything around it in the same cooler as the ice cream treats. Just trying to give you a glimpse into the glamorous life of a polish professional basketball player!

Warsaw was a very nice time. The first night we arrived we ate at Armando’s restaurant where he took care of us.
We had a couple of pizzas as appetizers, then a portion of pasta finished with some spruced up chicken and potatoes. The restaurant is on the outside of a mall, a pretty nice mall at that with a subway, which I had to get a chicken teriyaki. Drew and Sefton had their mind made up on some ice skating, but they closed too early for them. Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing them trying to skate around the big tree that was on the inside of the ice rink.

On Monday lunch was on our own so Drew, who is very similar to me when it comes to trying new things and going to authentic places, found a small polish restaurant in the dungeon of an old building. The part of town was called “old town” and reminded me of downtown Paris with the old architecture. We got the “meal for two” again which was translated in the menu as “huge meal-REAL COOL”. It consisted of rice, salad, potatoes, sausage, chicken liver wrapped in bacon, cheese wrapped in bacon, grilled chicken, pig neck, sauerkraut and meat, and two shish kabobs. Only thing missing were the sparklers. Needless to say there was plenty of food and it only cost 80 zlotys which is like $34.

We wandered around old town after lunch and ran into some guys dressed in whatever suits (look at the pictures) holding an axe and telling us no more beer, rock-n-roll and whatever else he was saying. We gave them a few zlotys for the pictures. We wandered a little too far and had a nice walk back to the hotel (where are the bikes when you need them). We did walk through the park where the Nazis’ had the Jewish ghetto. They had some brick barriers on the ground where the territory was. Reading the sign that told of the history of the place was a very sad.

The Game

WOW! We finally came out on the right side of overtime even after shooting 46% from the free throw line. We missed the front end of two shots to go up one and they missed there final shot. Overtime was a back in forth battle with no one going up more then 2. I made two free throws with 13 seconds left to put us up one. I then had to foul there big guy who made both of his free throws to put them up 1 with 3 seconds left. We called a time out and drew up the play from half court. The guard came off the screen and hit a bank shot three pointer for the win. It was a great game where we showed a lot of character. Kevin (PG) fouled out with 6 minutes left in the fourth and we were still with out skip. We maintained our composure and handed Polonia their first loss at home for the season.

I shot well from three 3-5 but went backwards on the 2’s again shooting 0-4 and 2-4 from the foul line. I added 5 rebounds, a couple assists, and a steal. Well I guess all that complaining I was doing paid off as I played 39 minutes this game.

This was a huge road trip for us, not being at full strength and still pulling out 2 wins. We have one more home game in the first round and then starts the second round where we will play two before Christmas break. We are 8-5 and around 5th in the league.

I have been having some internet trouble so that is why this blog was so late getting posted which means I will skip this Sunday and wait till next Sunday to post the next one!

I’m getting pretty excited about coming home for 9 days! Let the countdown begin

How about those young Butler Bulldogs 5-0! They play Cleavland State tonight which should be a good one.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Another week at the office!

2008-11-23T17:39:00.004+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Greetings from Hotel Komeda and club “Czekolada”, the club where you can “come and taste how the “Czekolada” taste like”. I’m not exactly sure what that means, I think it got lost in translation. That was the first stop on the road trip. It was a nice hotel with comfortable beds, but they were a little on small side. It was about an eight hour bus ride. We stopped at a small restaurant in some town. The neighbors had goats on leashes next to the road. The meal was just alright, so far the lunches on the road have all been chicken filled with spinach and cheese. Most places still manage to mess that up, like this place put a whole bottle of herbs/pepper inside the chicken. The dinner at the hotel was decent some spaghetti Bolognese, hard to mess that one up. The hotel had the smallest elevator I have seen which got me thinking.

I have ridden a ton of different elevators throughout my day and there are many variations. Are there competing elevator companies like cell phones (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T)? There could be L-VAT, Gravity-Defiant, and Silver risers. I’m not sure where I was going with this other then I don’t know who makes elevators. I will have to look that one up on wikipedia. If my travel channel or food network job does not pan out maybe I can get into the company naming business.

Game

We had a very nice first quarter taking an eight point lead into the 2nd. Then all hell broke lose where we picked up an intentional foul and a technical along with giving up multiple fast break lay-ups. We were lucky to go into halftime only down 4. The second half was a little better where we kept our composure and played well as a team hitting open shots and playing solid defense. We ended up with a 9 point victory.

I felt like this was one of my better games even though I did not score that much. I ended up with 7 points on 2-5 from three and 1-2 from the foul line along with 3 steals and 4 rebounds. I had my hands on a lot more rebounds tipping them out or somewhere where a teammate could grab them. I don’t believe the guy I was guarding scored more then two points on me. I know it is a team game but I take pride in stopping my man. I took part in my first press conference here in Poland. It is the same as any other. Coaches open up with a statement then the players, then questions. The gym itself reminded me of a small 1A high school in Indiana. It was actually smaller then that and the court was not regulation size it was also smaller.

Due to the financial situation we did not stay on the road we ended up driving back after the game arriving home at like 5 am. We practiced on Thursday and then turned around and left Friday for the game on Saturday. I was mistaken on the trip itself, we were going to stay in Poznan not Warsaw. We will be staying in Warsaw next weekend. In that short amount of time back at home I was able to try cow tongue. This was not on purpose, the restaurant that we get a discount at has a choice of three soups, and three entrées. There is usually a player or some one there to translate the menu, I decided to just guess number two. I did not know it was cow tongue till after I ate it and one of the players came for lunch and told me. It was not all that bad which was probably because they covered it in some kind of white sauce.

Friday we left for Polpharma. It was about a 4 hour bus trip through the snowy forests. We have had the first snow of the early winter. Luckily the team came through with our winter jackets before we left. We stayed at a normal European hotel that could not match up with the rooms of “HOTEL KOMEDA”, however the food could as the kitchen prepared some nice meals for us.

The Game

This was easily our worst game of the season, against the best team in the league right now (they are first place). What makes it worse was it was on TV. It is easy for some people to say well we just had a bad game, but my opinion is much different. I think they exposed a lot of weaknesses on our team, which is what good teams do. For one they pressured us like crazy and we backed down like scared turtles hiding in there shell. They pressured our guards like crazy and they made wrong decision after wrong decision. They dominated the ball far too much which kept people from getting involved. It had a train reaction where people stopped playing defense because they weren’t getting the ball. Then when they got the ball they felt like they had to shoot it because they would not get it again. I do not have this opinion only because I got 2 shots and maybe touched the ball 4 times. If you go down the stat sheet no one had a good shooting game because they were forcing instead of shooting wide open shots.

Personally, like I stated above I took 1 three and 1 two point shot. I played only 14 minutes of the game. This baffles me only because of the comments after the game. The coach said “I can’t even play our best shooter because you guys can’t find him”. Now some might take that as a compliment like wow I’m the best shooter, but for me it was an insult. In my whole career, I have not achieved what I have only because I could shoot, it was all the little things I brought to the team. For example making the extra pass, taking care of the ball, rebounding, playing solid defense, I can vividly remember times in the game where I displayed these things. Is it frustrating not getting shots when you’re open? Yes, but I don’t stop playing because of it, in fact I like to think I’m a smarter basketball player where I look for other areas to contribute. That is my 30 second rant sorry to put you guys through it.

We had a pre-thanksgiving dinner with the president on Sunday. Apparently they do not have turkey here in Kolobrezg. They even went 40 minutes to the next big city and still were not able to find any. They substituted chicken stuffed with dressing which was not that bad. The biggest thing missing were the sides. They served fries and salad that is no where close to the green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes, fried mushrooms, warm biscuits, and all the other delicious sides. I hope you all are thankful for these things come thanksgiving (if you want to give a small toast to me I wont object!! KIDDING).

We have a week of practice before the next match when we head 15 hours south east to the farthest game of the season. We then stay in Warsaw for a couple days before the next road game. Hopefully this week of practice we can get better on our weaknesses. I know I might sound like we our doomed, but we are 6-5 and in the middle of the pact in the league. There are still a lot of games left and we still have a long road ahead of us.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

From 1st to 7th, just that quick

2008-11-16T18:20:00.000+01:00

Hello Everyone,

Well, I can’t say that it has been the best week ever. We have now lost three in a row, two this week. We lost on the road Tuesday and then Saturday at home in overtime. Some would be happy taking the two teams who played for the championship last year to overtime, but not me. These were three games that we should of and could have won. It seems to me we lack discipline and execution.

Tuesday came down to poor free throw shooting and 3 point shooting. We played solid defense holding them under 70 points, but never got anything going offensively. We rarely get fast break points and our guards have been dominating the ball a lot. When we play together we are a very different (GOOD) team. Saturday we had a 16 point lead in the third quarter and we hit the selfish/lazy button. People started looking for there own shots and stopped running the plays. We stopped playing defense giving up close to 15 points on fast break lay-ups for them.

I have been pretty non existent on offense shooting 2-7 from 3 in both games and going to the free throw line only twice. We are defiantly missing the extra pass component that made it so fun to play at Butler and in Sweden. I’m still playing solid D having 3 steals in the two games and close to 5 boards each game while holding my player to barely scoring.

The scary thing it does not get any easier as the next four games are on the road. We have a very strong team that at times have shown we have the ability to go very far in the playoffs, but we defiantly need to fix some things and get tougher as a team or it could get ugly.

We had another American night this time at Kevin’s place. His girlfriend Ariana made some chicken and baked macaroni and cheese, with some veggies and garlic bread. It was a very good meal and we finished it off by playing some X-box.

We leave on Tuesday for our road trip. We play Wednesday in Ostrow then Saturday at Polania. I believe we are staying over in Warsaw on Thursday so that should be nice to see the city, I have heard good things about it.

Until next time! (hopefully more cheery with more stories!!)

This is BC gone for now

The 51st post!!!

2008-11-05T14:10:00.013+01:00

Hello Everyone,

A lot has happened in between our two weeks off with no league game. I will start with the scrimmage we had last week. We played a division 2 team who was not very good. It is hard to get up for that game when you have everything to lose and nothing really to gain from it, and of course the other team is playing has hard as they can. For me I would still rather play the game then doing a full practice. We were handling the team pretty easily with a 20 point lead in the third quarter when one of my teammates tried to tip dunk a missed shot and broke the rim. It was comical because he is like 6'5" 200 pounds. I was in the corner of the floor next to the opponent’s bench when it happened. I looked over at there coach and told him good game. He was like "I guess it is over". It had to be a little frustrating for them driving 2 hours to not get to play almost half of the game.

I had some food mishaps during the week off. I tried to step out of my normal cooking comfort zone and bought some sauce for some noodles and chicken. I thought it was a cream of mushroom or something similar, WHOA! I was way off. It ended up being some Dijon mustard sauce with carrots in the bottle as well. Luckily I did not put it on my noodles just the chicken I was baking. I was able to scrape that off pretty easily, but what made it worse was I just covered the noodles and chicken with ketchup and BBQ sauce (hopefully your not eating while you’re reading this). I felt like I was five again when my parents had to put ketchup on my broccoli to eat it. Anyway it was a horrible idea and I ate the chicken and had to throw the noodles out. That was followed up by another terrible purchase. I bought some tuna, but I could not read the polish on the side that said covered in tomato sauce (that is just an excuse if I was paying attention you could easily tell). I wanted to make some tuna salad so I tried to rinse the tuna off (four cans) another terrible idea that did not work. The birds ended up with a gourmet meal and I had to settle for the reliable P & J. I must say the food in Berlin made up for these little mishaps.

Drew, Kevin, and Ariana (Kevin’s girlfriend) rode with coach to Berlin to tour for the weekend. We stayed at a hostel called “Generator”. It was decent, in a nice location next to the tram system, with okay rooms. It is not high time for backpacking so it was not very crowded and it was pretty cheap. I figured the best way to tell you about my trip is with pictures and I will give the stories below them.

The first night we hung out at the bar that was in the hostel listening to some comedians that hopefully they did not pay because they were not very good. Then we took a tram to a side of town where some other night spots were and found a place with some good food and a good atmosphere.

This was at the hostel and since it was Halloween, Kevin's girlfriend had a mask for me to where around Berlin. It kind of made me look like the hambuglar just with out the striped shirt.

On Saturday it turned out to be a really nice day and drew and I rode bikes all around Berlin. It took us about 6 hours and we had seen pretty much everything you could see in downtown Berlin.

Above is famous checkpoint charlie. The guy that holds the American flag was on break when I took the picture.

The famous Reichstag (spelling) .

The gate they stole from Paris (kidding but they have this same thing in downtown Paris.)

A huge TV tower in East Berlin that you can see from almost anywhere downtown and a church right in front of it.

The Berlin wall. A section that was graffiti by someone good!

How many people have rode a tiny rental bike in front of the Berlin Wall??

Victory tower!

These were just some of the highlights of our bike ride and what we got to see. We also saw the Holocaust memorial. It is a very unique memorial and hard to explain. At this point we were getting very hungry and I forget to take a picture because my stomach was leading the way. We stopped at a authentic German cafe. Drew and I ended up getting the meal for two which was a pretty good portion as you can see from the picture below. I did not get to my camera out in time to catch the sparklers that were going when they brought it.

This lunch was amazing and we followed it up with a great dinner. We met Coach, his wife, and our agent in Germany Ingo at Tony Roma's. I had steak and ribs and it was unbelievable. For some reason it is very hard to get beef here in Poland. After dinner we tried to go to a cocktail lounge at the top of a 17 floor building where you rode a glass elevator up. It was Saturday night and we had too big of a group. Instead we went to a place called Victoria bar. I would characterize it as a upscale Manhattan bar. It was really packed but a cool place.

We had no plans for Sunday and we were not leaving until 6 PM. Kevin and Ariana went on a tour of a concentration camp, but I did not feel like hearing all about that and seeing that madness. I had a class in high school called "Holocaust" and that pretty much gave me my fill. Drew and I decided to go see the Olympic stadium from 1936. It took us about an hour to get there via the tram system but it was a really good idea and the stadium was very cool. They charged 4 Euros to go inside and they had little glass information boards throughout the entire stadium talking about the history of it.

The stadium is still a working soccer stadium for the Berlin team. They renovated the stadium in 2000 or sometime around there adding the roof and chairs and all the other things to make it a modern stadium. The outside and other venues that were built for the 1936 Olympics were still intact like they were back then.

After we toured the stadium we went back into east Berlin where they had one of the biggest urban development projects. They had two theaters and all types of restaurants and even a casino. In fact they were setting up for the premiere of "007". we rode the fastest elevator in Europe I believe. It went from floor one to 24 in like 20 seconds. There was a nice 360 degree view from the top, but it was pretty foggy.

They also had a Christmas market so you know we had to get a bratwurst. That was our appetizer before we went to the restaurant for lunch. Drew called the place "Disney world of beer fest". The girls wore the stereotypical outfits you see from the movies, it was a big tent, and family style seating. The lunch again was amazing, I believe I had bread dumplings with pork, lamb, and beef. After lunch we went back to the market so I could get a fresh crepe for dessert and drew chose a another bratwurst for his. Overall, Berlin was a great time and much needed break from the everyday routine.

BACK TO PLAYING

We played the 34th best team in Europe according to Eurobasket. We were ranked 65th before the game. We played a very solid game and went into overtime. They went on a 6-0 run at the start of overtime and we could not come back from that. We gave up too many offensive boards and made a few mistakes on defense. Good teams make you pay when you do that, and they were definitely a good team. They have David Logan who is from North Central (same school as skip). I would have to say skip won this match up leading our team with 20 something points.

I played a decent game shooting 2-3 from 3, but missed both my two point jump shots in 17 minutes. I grabbed a couple rebounds and got a couple deflections. The one three I missed was right before halftime and it was down and back out.

We play 4 games in two weeks against teams that are towards the top of the league and 3 of them are on the road. We should find out a lot about our team in these games.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Taking a week off!

2008-11-02T22:08:00.002+01:00

So i will be taking this Sunday off as i just returned from Berlin and would not be able to give the blog the proper time it deserves for my loyal fans:)

You can look forward to next Sundays although it has the potential to be a big one so might want to read it after the colts but before Desperate Housewives!

Preview for next week! (so i can remember what to type about)

1. Crazy ending to the scrimmage

2. Berlin trip (stories and pics)

3. food mishaps

4. our game with Prokom (tied for first with us)

5. Anything else interesting this week

Until next time

This is BC gone for now

Nice view from up here

2008-10-25T12:37:00.006+02:00

Hello Everyone,

This week started off with something I have never done before, a high ropes course. The team manager owns this little tourist attraction, and with us only playing one game a week we have plenty of free time. It was an impressive high ropes course and we had a lot of fun. There are some pictures below that the second coach took for me. He had a little trouble with the camera and there were some pictures that ended up as like a 2 second video. It turned out to be a media frenzy with news cameras and some photographers. Skip was the only one to not go up on it, although I will give him credit for trying. He climbed up the first cargo net to the first ledge and could not make it past that.

This week will be very low key with a scrimmaged planned on Thursday with a division 2 team. Our next league game is not for two weeks. I’m not sure what Poland calls it but this coming weekend is a holiday for them where they celebrate the dead. I’m not exactly what that entails, but I’m sure I will find out soon. Drew and I are planning to go to Berlin this coming weekend to do some sight seeing. We will prob. get a hotel for Friday and Saturday night. So if any of the readers have been to Berlin and would like to suggest something please feel free.

Our game on Saturday was much like the weekend before where we dominated much of the game leading by 20. Then we tried to let them back in it when they cut the lead down to six with about 3 minutes to go. We made the plays and came up with the win. Tony Weeden the player from Indianapolis actually joined this team after his team folded so we saw him again. He had a very good game shooting and was the person that almost brought them back.

I shot 1-4 from the field (1-3 from 3) ending with 3 points. As soon as I entered the game I knocked down a three. Then I had another look on the fast break and rushed it. The third three was with two seconds left and I just had to get it up there. All three shots came with in the first 3 minutes of me being in the game, and then I just disappeared. I’m still trying to figure how to fit into this offense to get a few more shots. I’m going to look at the game film and just keep trying to improve. The great thing is we are winning so I can’t complain too much.

Since this is a short blog I thought I would give you my top 10 list of things I wish I had or could fix here in Poland!

1. An elevator- I live at the top of the apartment building which means I have to climb over 60 stairs at least 2 times a day (I workout enough I don’t need any extra).

2. A dryer- I hate the feeling of the socks, they are so hard and dry.

3. A higher light- the light in the kitchen was hung in there for ppl. 6 feet and shorter, I hit my head at least twice a week.

4. A car- I’m doing fine without one but it would be nice to go to the store on my terms plus I’m like my grandpa and love the Sunday drives to no where.

5. lettuce- They do not have salad like I’m used to, and I make a lot of cold meat sandwiches and would love a slice of lettuce on them (prob. being picky but hey I can be)

6. A bedroom- I’m not saying my bed is bad but sleeping in the living room which has four windows and big window on the patio door is not good for sleeping in.

7. Bigger TV- this is more for my ps3 because I can’t really watch much polish TV, but the screen is a little bigger then my computer.

8. Faster internet- They gave us this Iplus which works off a sim card. It is slower then dial up at times.

9. Teammates closer- most of the teammates live just a little out of walking distance (especially on my lazy days). This is a double edge sword though because I like my proximity to the gym.

10. PLAYING TIME- so I have prob. hammered this point to my readers and I apologize but I like to play!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Future Navigator

2008-10-19T20:31:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Fall has arrived! Well actually it has been here for a few weeks now and if it is any indication to winter it will probably be a cold one.So i had a picture in front of my apartment of the leaves and trees, but some how I erased it before it made it here.

I participated in my first ever step class, the whole team did. It was pretty hysterical seeing all these tall guys doing some of the moves the instructor was having us do. I did not even know my hips could move that way.

I felt like I was in a 1980’s Claudia Schiffer exercise video.

I visited a high school this week with drew and one of the polish players. It is a school where they wear uniforms like the navy. The teacher who met us outside and was explaining the school said “they are preparing to be future navigators of the world.” I thought that was pretty funny. They had a table set up in the gym and it was like a media room where the kids could ask questions. They were pretty shy with asking any questions in English. So I looked over at drew and said “these kids are going to have a rough time navigating through the English Channel.” It is one of those jokes that are so bad it was funny. After the questions we played with there junior team a little bit and that was the day.

I have been eating most of my lunches at the gym. They have a restaurant at the top which gives us a discount. We pay 9 zlotes which is like 4 dollars for soup, some sort of meat and potatoes, and a small salad. The portions are a little small but when it is that cheap and good can’t complain too much. Armando the Greek chef is heading to Warsaw for a job at a restaurant. That is sad news for us as he won’t be around to cook us some more great meals. He made his final meal for us on Thursday, which included some risotto, pork, potatoes, and brussels sprouts (spelling).

We won our game Saturday by 3 points. We tried to lose it at the end. We were up by 14 the whole game and it was tied with 30 seconds to go. We got sloppy with the ball at the end and they hit some big shots. A win is a win!

It was a very frustrating game for me playing wise. I hit a three and had a couple steals in about 8 minutes of play in the first half. I did not score in the second half missing a fast break layup with a guy jumping in front of me and a three. In the last two games I have shot the ball 6 times, which for me that is ok if we are winning, but only playing 16 minutes a game is not much fun. As soon as I feel like I’m getting in rhythm like the first half I’m pulled. Then it is hard to get back in the flow late in the third or fourth. I was taught at butler to take accountability for things so I’m going to keep working on how to be productive in such little time. Hopefully I can just keep improving in practice and prove that I belong on the floor.

I’m shooting very well from 3 10-19 in five games. I have a goal to make the 3 point shooting contest during all star weekend. I also am keeping up with my goal to lead the team in steals. I am second with 7 steals in five games .

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Football sunday

2008-10-12T22:44:00.003+02:00

Hello Everyone,

YES! They actually called a foul on the play to the left.

Well we made the 8 hour trip to play the next game on the schedule on Wednesday. This was the game where the player from Pike High school was on the team. We stayed at the hotel that was connected to the gym, except it was not really a hotel. It was more like a dorm room with a living room. They had two beds, a cot, and a futon. Most rooms had three players, one had four. That was my room and I chose to sleep on the futon, it looked pretty comfortable. Wow, looks were never so deceiving. It had a huge dip in the middle and I basically tossed and turned the whole night. I add this story in so I have an excuse for the game because I did not play so hot.

0-3 from three, 1 steal, and a whole lot of running around. The good thing was the team we played was not very strong so we did not have to play our best and that we did not do. Everyone was a little out of the game at times. We defiantly did not look like a very good team. We ended up winning by eleven, but after the game the locker room felt more like a loss.

Come to find out, the next day the team dropped out of the league probably due to money reasons. So we pretty much traveled there for absolutely nothing and were stripped of the win. If they strip the stats I guess that would be good for me. It also means that our game with them on January 3rd, will no longer take place so hopefully that means about 10 days to be home around the holidays.

On Saturday we played our biggest rival of the league at home and we looked like we did on Wednesday. We have found success on this team by playing defense, and we were not helping each other and defiantly not playing very good one on one Defense. This was a unique team as they did not have a five man, which should have played into our hands with the big guys we have. We can’t seem to get on the same page with them. Right now the guards don’t have confidence that the big man will make the right decision, and the big men don’t have confidence that they will get the ball when they post hard. This is something we defiantly need to correct. We also had two players’ sick who played very little and were not able to have much influence. We were down 17 at half.

With all that said, in the first 4 minutes of the third quarter we pulled within three. We just could never get over the hump. I played a very efficient game shooting 2-3 from three and 4-5 from the foul line, with 4 rebounds, and a steal. I still made a couple boneheaded decisions that led to turnovers. It was the first loss of the season which we all knew would come but was just hoping not this soon and not at home. We have three homes games in a row now with a week in between all of them so hopefully we will be able to improve our weaknesses and get back on the winning track.

I have been researching on how to get a job with the travel channel or something like it. I mean I have all this travel experience (or should I say experiences) now and people (some people) say they like reading my writing so you never know. All though this is probably just one of those phases I go through when I’m trying to figure out what to do with my 12 hours of free time a day. I know last year I tried to learn how to trade currency, but I gave that up pretty quickly when I realized I had no idea what was going on. For example, when I came to Poland in august $1= 2.34 zlotes (polish currency), now with all this market falling stuff in America $1=2.63 zlotes, which means the dollar is actually stronger. I do not understand that at all, but it is better for me as it makes cost of living cheaper for me.

We had a little American party today at Drew’s apartment. I brought over a pepperoni pizza and some kool-aid and he supplied the computer to watch the colt’s game, while skip supplied the ride to and from. We ended up watching more of the lion’s game as it was a lot closer game. Good to see the colts finally get a win at home and look a little like their old selves. After the lions lost on some bad calls they went back to the studio and showed the ending of another game that ended with a field goal and then flipped to the third game that ended in a field goal. The three of us were acting like crazy fans for ending of all three games either rooting for them to make or miss. It was quite hysterical (not historical) where we finished with the chant of USA. For a moment I felt like I was back home in my living room, and then I looked around and saw no chips and salsa or popcorn and realized I am still far from home.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

2008-10-03T13:04:00.007+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well, it is a good week for the blog. I have lots of stories and even added some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

We will start off with the middle of the week and our 10 hour bus trip. It took a little less time so that made me happy. I never feel real good after long bus rides I think I get a little motion sickness from these bumpy roads and uncomfortable seats. We stopped at a restaurant named "Texicano" about half way to Gornik. Which I figured would be some sort of Mexican food place. I was gladly mistaken when they served chicken stuffed with some cheese and spinach, and a ton of butter (could have done without the butter). The weird thing was they also had a Buddha hanging on the wall and seemed to be decorated more like an Asian place. This place was going through a little bit of an identity crisis.

I think I’m going to visit more gas stations then I am gyms in my time here in Poland. On the way home we stopped at an unusual one called “Auto Bar”. It was a very small truck stop that was open 24 hours. The bus driver was required to take a 30 minute stop. I was one of the few players to get off the bus as it was pretty late and many of them were sleeping. As I was walking around the place I caught a whiff of what smelled like some animals. Sure enough there was a pig in a cage in front of the restaurant next to the road. I kept looking around and noticed they had a sign for a zoo. This truck stop also had a petting zoo in front of it. I was disappointed though as most of the animals were in there barns sleeping. I’m sure they don’t get a lot of that with the cars and trucks driving by at all hours. I also got a hotdog which was not a very good idea as it came topped with something similar to coleslaw in a very hard bun, should have followed the captains lead as he got a soup that looked really good.

The hotel we stayed at was actual and old castle. We stayed in the old servants’ quarters of the castle that was converted into the hotel. The castle itself is a tourist destination. It had a lot of history, it was built in 1700’s and was taken over by the Nazis during WWII. The Nazis built tunnels under the castle that were used as research facility. The tour was only in polish and you had to have 15 people to go so we did not get to see the tunnels themselves but the castle was pretty neat. The land acreage was massive as you had to turn off the main road and go 600 meters back. They had a horse jumping stadium (a stadium where horses run around and jump over things). It looked like it had not been used for a long time. We also ate at the top of tower in a room that was filled with animals. Mostly deer racks and a few wild pigs were on the walls with your occasional fox. Drew’s parents actually made the road trip from kolobrzeg to watch the game and stay at the castle hotel.

His parents actually left on Sunday to drive back to Berlin and catch the plane home. They were here for a week and got to see the 3 games. They were very nice people as I ate with them on Friday night before the game. They rented a car and did a lot of touring around as well. I could not believe they made the 10 hour trip, but I guess they did not have much to do in the city.

We have been getting in an ice chamber the day after games to help with recovery. As you can see in the picture below it is a little round shaped container that blows dry ice at a temperature of -130 degrees Celsius. We have gloves on and wooden shoes. You are only in there for about 2 to 3 minutes, but it does get pretty cold. I can’t really tell if it is helping, but I’m sure it is not hurting either so you just do what you’re told.

The team has been playing pretty well as we have started the season 3-0. I believe it is the first time they have won three games in a row or started the season 3-0, maybe both. Gornik was the away game and we started pretty slowly and were down by 4 at half. We were not shooting the ball very well either, but opened up the third quarter in a tear and went up by 14 pretty quick. We ended up wining by about 10.
Personally I did not have my best showing shooting 1-5 from three and scoring 5 points. I did not get myself involved in the game like I usually do in other areas of the game.

Saturday we played at home against a team from Warsaw. We were up by almost 20 before the first quarter was over. We played very strong defense throughout the entire game. They went to a zone that slowed us up a bit so we will defiantly need to correct that before next game.

Personally, I had a decent game 2-4 from three which were the only points I scored. I am having a terrible time drawing fouls. I drove three or four times and at least three of them were clearly fouls and I can’t get the call. I did have a better all around game with 5 rebounds, 2 steals, and a charge.

We have two more games this week, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday. We will leave Tuesday to make another 10 hour trip to the game. I think after the season I would have traveled the whole country of Poland on a bus. The team we play on Wednesday has a player from Pike High School (Tony Weeden) which is where some of my brothers and sisters go or went. I played a lot with him this summer in open gyms and the Pro-Am tourney in Louisville.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Let the Season begin

2008-09-28T21:21:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I guess I have to start off by talking about the big win. We opened up the season on Saturday with a home game against a good team with a good reputation. We were a big underdog from what I understood. That is why you play games right, no one wins championships on paper.

We started off pretty slow, I think it had a lot to do with the nerves and excitement. They ran off to an early 10 point lead and kept it most of the first into the second quarter. We started a little run in the second and evened the score before they hit a last second shot to go into halftime. The second half started out much like the first were they built an early lead. We closed the gap in the fourth and it was a very entertaining fourth quarter. The lead changed hands all the way to the end of the game where they missed a game winning three from one of there best shooters. Kevin hit 2 free throws to put us up by two with three seconds left before they missed the shot.

Personally, I had a decent game. I came off the bench and picked up a foul the very first play (they made the shot too). Then I came down and airballed a floater. I was thinking it was going to be a long night, but I settled down and knocked down 2 threes in the first half. The second half was much better as I hit two more threes and scored a couple baskets along with a steal. I finished the game with 17 points. The disappointing thing was my foul shots where I was 1-3. We travel 10 hours on Tuesday to play on Wednesday. I defiantly like the start of the season where we play two games a week.

Outside of basketball it was a very good week. One of the big events of the week was playing a game with the sponsors in front of some fans. It was pretty comical to see some of these ppl try to play. I have never seen basketball look as bad as these guys made it look. My team was on the losing end of the game, but it was fun none the less.

It was also a good week for food as Armando (Greek chef) cooked another fabulous meal. I also gave an attempt at being a chef when I made some fish stuffed with spinach/cream cheese. I also cooked up some lightly fried garlic fish one night. Growing up dinner was usually homemade and it was conversation hour so I’m usually the most homesick when I sit down to these WONDERFUL meals I make;)

I also tried out two restaurants in town. An Italian place called Bella Vista and The Grill House. Bella Vista was the place we ate after the game. It was pretty good except the portion was pretty small for an Italian restaurant or maybe Maggiono’s spoiled me. Sunday the guy who picked us up from the airport (Michael) invited Drew and I to dinner and chose the grill house. This was also a really good meal of some pork steak and potatoes. I also forgot to mention that I ate at a Chinese restaurant last week that was pretty good. It was like any other Chinese restaurant you go to with out a buffet where you just hope to get the right thing. It is kind of like playing the lottery because sometimes you are going to get something you really like and the next time you may get some thing you hate.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

The champs are here!

2008-09-17T22:22:00.004+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well I have to start out by correcting the last post where I stated that it was a 14 hour trip, Coach was sure to point out to me that it was only 13 hours. Apparently he reads the blog to make sure I’m not saying anything about him. It was the longest bus trip I believe I have been on. I mean I could have flew home and been half way back. The trip was not terrible, we watched a couple movies, one called almost famous that I have never seen but was really good. When we got into Czech there were some nice views as we drove through mountains and valleys. We stayed at a “Club Tennis Hotel” which was like any other hotel only that it had like 8 clay tennis courts and a stadium court as well. I saw on the wall where they had some past winners for the Nokia cup, the only name I recognized was Martina Hingis.

The gym we played in was right down the street from the hotel. It was not a huge gym but the floor and goals were nice. The tournament had 4 teams from four different countries in it. Slovakia, Austria, us, and the host team (Czech Republic). We really never had a much of a challenge blowing out all three teams by over 20.

Friday we played the Slovakian team that had one American as there point guard. They were not on our level at all as we breezed through winning by 40 some points. I put a good game together scoring 17 points in a variety of different ways. There really is not much I can say about this game only that we are starting to really gel as a team.

Saturday we played the host team who had a decent team. I believe they had three Americans, the one most people would know is Shaun Pruitt from Illinois University. We played an even first half I believe taking a one point lead into halftime. The third quarter we came out and jumped on them and put the game away early. I believe we outscored them 25-5 in the third quarter. I got off to a fast first half again scoring nine points, but ended the game with that as well. Again I believe our defense is really going to be the key to our victories. I’m not 100% on the stats but I think only one team has scored more then 70 points against us.

We had already locked up first place in the tournament before Sunday unless the team could beat us by over 50 points. The good thing was we did not take that for granted and came out a played another well executed game winning by 21 points. I played well defensively, but the shot was a little off again in this game. I was 1-4 from three and like 2-5 from the 2 finishing with 8 points. They gave us a basket of goodies and a Vase for a trophy. It looked like they went and took it out of an old ladies house of course emptying the water and flowers first. Kevin Hamilton was the MVP also getting a basket of goodies.

Even though the teams were not on our level yet we still put together three good games together which is the perfect time as we have one of the biggest games to start the season on Saturday. The team is called Anwil and is considered to be a contender come playoffs. It is home which is good since we have traveled every weekend this preseason. If we keep playing the defense the way we have shown and play together on the offensive end I believe we can also be a contender for the title.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Something is going to go right!

2008-09-14T17:15:00.000+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Maybe some of you noticed the video tours I posted, which means I finally got internet in my apartment. I’m sure the videos would have been better without the commentary. The internet is called I-plus which is like a sprint card you plug into your computer. It is handy especially on road trips, but the down side is it is not very strong. I tried to fix this by updating it to the newer version they have out and I accidentally deleted the whole program. I do not have the software for the program so who knows how long it will take to get that back up and running so I’m back in “Crazy Park”.

The week was pretty low key, but did include a very good dinner at coach’s friend’s house. The coach, two other teammates, and I went over to the Greek chef’s house. He works on a charter boat as a chef and married a polish woman which is what brought him to Poland. He cooked us some spiced up pasta noodles with potatoes and “sweet water” fish. I guess that is how fresh water translates into English. We also had some white wine which reminded me of Loren. When he worked at Flemings he had to memorize which wines went with what. Well anyway this wine was good with the fish. For the most part I have just been cooking at home trying to save some of the money. I really miss the free meals in Sweden. The coach has mentioned something he is trying to work out where we would get like one or two meals a week either free or very cheap. I will take either!!

We traveled this weekend for some more games. The original plan was to have a tournament at our place, but the club only invited one team. The good thing would have been we could not have finished lower then second. So anyway we ended up traveling to this team’s home gym to play in a charity game on Friday night and then play them again in the morning on Saturday. The trip was about five hours, which is not terrible but it seems like we have just been living on the road. We travel to Czech Republic next weekend which is another 14 hours or so bus ride. What makes these trips even worse is Poland does not have any interstates so you’re traveling down bumpy two lane roads through town after town. If I took the interstates for granted I will not make that mistake again.

My ankle has still been giving me trouble and I think I tried to come back too early playing in the games the weekend before. I ended up sitting out both games this weekend in attempt to get the ankle at 100%. It is not something I want to battle during the season and with it rapidly approaching I thought it would be best to rest it. It is feeling much better and I will be practicing again on Monday and playing in Tuesday game against a D-2 team AT OUR GYM.

The team played very well this weekend though. We won both games pretty convincingly. We played very good defense again and played well together. There were some highlight dunks that were Sportscenter worthy. Skip had a tip dunk on two players off a missed shot and sefton (Canadian who played at central Michigan) had a steal and a crazy dunk. There is one aspect of this team that is similar to Sweden where everyone has the potential to be in double digits every game. Five guys averaged over 12 last year and I believe there is a very good chance that there will be five or six players on this team averaging that.

I’m looking forward to getting back to practicing and playing multiple games feeling 100% and actually being able to move.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

TOURS!

2008-09-09T23:57:00.005+02:00

Can I stay healthy?!

2008-09-07T16:58:00.004+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well, I have had about a week now to get accounted with the city. It is not a huge city, but does have a nice downtown area with lots of fountains and park areas. It has a small river or a canal running through the town, and I’m assuming into the ocean. I am not 100% on that. The city has tried to forget its communist past with adding a lot of colors to the apartments and rebuilding a lot of them however there are still reminders that the communist reign had its grips here with the tall blocked shape apartments. There ugly grey color rising 14 to 20 stories in the air. From what they have told me kolozberg used to belong to Germany.

I have been spending some time in the wireless park since I’m still waiting for internet in my apartment. The park seems to attract the crazies more then the computers. I have proof to back this statement up, first starting with the lady who was walking a ferret on a leash. She was saying it did not bite in polish over and over (a polish teammate was with us). Then the next thing you know it bit Drew in the toe. She must not be a very good ferret trainer. Second incident involved four of us. A drunken guy came stumbling over to Skip and Drew on their park bench with his hands together bowing and then began to ask questions. They could not understand him very well through is broken English. Once they ignored him long enough he came over to me and the polish teammate (dawid, not spelled wrong the polish way of spelling it). He was just standing there when I said “save it”, something concerning my computer and he asked “what **** kind of word is save it”. He then asked “what the #### are you guys doing in Paris” again in broken English and a mumble. We tried our best to ignore him, but skip pulled out his video camera and started recording. We left shortly after that so the man could get to sleep on his park bench. The third incident involved alcohol again only it was like 7 in the evening when three guys came stumbling through the park. They decided to use the restroom outside, which is fine except they went behind a bench with four older ladies and were clearly visible. They said something to the men and they all started conversation. I wish I could have understood because everyone in the park was laughing including the women on the bench. Those are the only stories I have from “Crazy Park” right now, but the other odd thing was my computer was the only computer out of 7 teammates to connect to the wireless. Sometimes older is better!!

We traveled about an hour in half for a tournament this past weekend. I can’t even spell the town because I don’t have the proper letters on the keyboard. It is funny to think about that I’m at all these different cities and I could not even get back there on my own if I tried or even pronounce the names correctly. We played Friday night and drove back, then played Saturday and Sunday staying over Saturday night. I would have rather drove back on Saturday night as well due to the hotel they put us in. It was about 20 minutes from the gym we were playing at. When you first walked in you had to dodge the pool table to get to reception, then at reception it was a desk with no computer, no phone, and no drawers. I forgot my camera, but the lobby and the room were defiantly picture worthy. The room itself had four beds and a table with two plastic lawn chairs in the middle of the room. I don’t think you can actually call these beds either they were more like glorified park benches. It had a piece of wood in the middle of the bed that stuck up. Even if you could fall asleep on them we then had to listen to a wedding reception that was occurring directly below us until like 3 AM (we played at 11 am on Sunday). I think drew and I spent about 20 minutes just laughing wondering if it was a dream or if we were on the show “Punked”. The only good thing was they did have a LAN cord to get on the internet and we watched some of the college football games that were on.

As for the basketball we played five games last week. We played Sunday and Tuesday both at home winning one and ending in a tie on the other one (it was preseason so we did not play overtime). I did not play in either one, but we seemed to only play well for one half. Luckily it did not hurt us in either of these games, but it did come back to get us in the tournament this past weekend.

We played Friday night against the host team and had a rather good first half. The start of the third quarter decided the game where they started on a 12-0 run in the first four minutes and we never recovered. It was a similar situation in the second game where we played another good first half and just came off really slow in the third. It also did not help that we shot absolutely terrible both games in the second half. My game was defiantly off as I am still recovering from the ankle injury. I was a step slower and my shot was just off. I believe I shot 2-14 from 3 and like 4-11 on 2’s for all three games. My luck with injuries has also been terrible as I got kicked in the eye on Saturday night’s game and have a black eye. I would like to describe how this happened but it would just confuse you. The good thing was we blew out the team Sunday morning. We put two good halves together and played well together. Our defense has been outstanding holding team to under 65, we were just struggling shooting which I don’t feel will continue. We have about two weeks or three until the season starts which is plenty of time to work on our stuff and feel comfortable with everyone.

This week will be all practices and we are supposed to host a tournament next weekend, but they are not sure if that is a go. Monday is something they have labeled as “Ziby Day”. Ziby is our trainer and we will be getting treatments, massages, and getting in the whirlpool.

I would like to give special congratulations to my cousin who got married this weekend!

A HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mother and step farther as they share the same birth date! (Sep 6th) And MORGIE (Sep 9th) on her 24th. Love ya babe!

I would like to thank those who have left comments on the blog as well. It is always nice to read those!

Pictures include a teammate’s apartment balcony where he hosted a cookout, and my black eye

As soon as I get internet in my apartment I will upload the video of my apartment.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

I have finally unpacked

2008-08-30T19:31:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone,

In case you could not tell from the last entry I’m so glad camp is over, but we had to do one last activity to send it over the top. We were honorary members of the polish rowing team (sarcasm), but we did go rowing. I have a lot of respect for the people that do that as a sport. That is one tough sport, but it also did not help that we were rowing in the ship that the Vikings were using. Actually that is giving this boat far too much credit. We used oars that weighed 20 pounds and were cracked. We had to focus on keeping the oar in the boat and staying on pace (we were terrible). I felt like my left arm was Pop-Eyes after he ate the spinach. The right one did not get so much work as we stayed on one side and tried to row around this island. Drew decided to be He-man and break is oar, so he did not have to row anymore (it was a brilliant move). Let’s just say I will not be joining a rowing team anytime soon. We packed our bags up and headed to Lithuania about a four hour drive from where we were.

We had to exchange some polish money to Lits as the currency was called. I gave them 50 zlotys (polish currency) and got 50 Lits. I then attempted to buy some ice cream, but did not realize we had stopped like 20 feet from the border and was still in Poland. I could not figure out why the lady would not accept the money. Skip had to spot me the 3 zlotys. We stayed at a very nice 4-Star Best Western (I don’t think they have the same star system as the states). Hopefully, the tour I took on my camera works below so you can take a glimpse of the hotel. The food was also better, but they still were pretty skimpy on the portions. We were talking about how if someone wanted to get fat in Europe you really had to try. We stumbled upon a really cool pizza joint in Lithuania one of the nights we were still scrounging for food. They had a little stream with fish running through the middle with rock formations everywhere and the pizza was pretty good also. The two games we played were not in the same city as we stayed. We drove 45 minutes Thursday for the game and about hour in a half on Friday for the game.

We won both games, but they were not pretty. We were a little rough around the edges in the first game and it took us a little while to settle down. We took a lot of jump shots as we are still learning the system. I believe we shot 7-30 from three, and I was 3-6. The positive thing was we won both games differently offensively, but the defense was strong in both games.

Personally, I played very well the first game. I was able to get myself going with a couple threes and a couple break away lay-ups. I think I was like 6-11 shooting and 2-4 from the line for 17 or 19 points. I played very solid defense drawing a couple charges and some strips. I have to try and get used to these refs again as they are so inconsistent. Both teams we played were very physical, but nothing compared to the second game. I believe this teams plan was to use all 17 guys and all there fouls. I have never seen a game so physical before. It made some of our games with Wright State Detroit, and Milwaukee feel like high school games. We had our point guard with a huge gash above his eye, one big man with a big Charlie Horse, and drew looked like he had just fought a cat. I had a rather unlucky game 2. I did not even play 1 second before I was injured. I was boxing out on a free throw and went up for the rebound when the guy behind pushed me in the back and I landed straight on the hip and elbow. After I shook it off I went back in and drew a three point play, then drove for a lay-up. I scored it but in the process landed on there big guys foot and twisted my ankle pretty bad. I had already tweaked in practice and had it taped up, but that did not seem to matter. I guess if one was to look at the stat sheet I would look pretty good (2-2 fg, 1-1 ft, 2 minutes played). The ankle is swollen up pretty good. It looks like I’m out for about 4 days as we try to get the swelling down. I will miss two games in the process, Sunday and Tuesday. We have a tournament next weekend and I should be ready to go by then.

We drove through the night Friday night after our second game and arrived in kolberg around 8 AM. Luckily our apartments were ready. I have a very nice apartment that should suit me very well. It has a bedroom, but the beds our very small and I will just be using the couch as a bed. The kitchen is very modern with a nice stove and a big fridge. The apartment was not very functional when I first arrived, I had to move some things around. I like the setup and should be very nice. I really like the balcony as it has a nice view into the city. Also, the bathroom is the nicest I have seen out of all my apartments. It has an awesome shower and a nice big sink and faucet. I also took a little video tour which will hopefully work. With the long trip of carrying my luggage everywhere it seems my ps3 cord was broken. I will be trying to find that as well as getting internet set up for the apartment. The good news is the WII (Nintendo system) works. The apartment is very close to the gym like a 30 second walk. I can see it from my balcony. Also, downtown is rather close, but there is no grocery store close that is the one bad thing. It is very nice to have everything unpacked and I will be beginning to settle in my town for the next 8 months. I am posting this from a wireless hot spot downtown and it is food time!!

P.S. I guess you can’t use the word historically when describing a laugh, and finance is not the same as fiancé. Thanks to my little proof readers I am getting smarter with each post;)

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

I am trouble uploading the videos should hopefully have them by the middle of the week!

Is camp over YET??

2008-08-24T22:50:00.008+02:00

Hello Everyone,

Well we have about 2 days left of camp and it could not come any sooner. I think everyone is ready for a change of scenery. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining because I’m defiantly not. This has been a lot easier adjustment then France was and I have been able to keep my weight on here. However I have been living out of a bag for about 2 weeks now in two of the tiniest hotel rooms with one of the biggest guys on the team (Drew). He has been a good roommate and we get along well, but he does snore louder then me. I believe that is a big accomplishment from what people have told me about my snoring. I have actually had to start sleeping with ear plugs at night. Don’t worry I’m not talking behind his back we have had many conversations about it. Like I mentioned in the last entry we drove about 10 hours to the north east of Poland for camp.

The place is nestled in between a forest and a huge lake. There is also a horse farm on the hotel grounds, but we did not have a chance to ride any (nor did I want to). The food has defiantly been a surprise every day. For example one of my breakfasts at the hotel was hot dogs and spaghetti. Sounds like a breakfast of champions getting those carbs early in the day. They have been serving there milk warm as well so that is hard to deal with. They seem to treat there lunches like dinners here, where you have soup to start then the main course of meat and potatoes and salad and vegetable (usualy not a bad meal). Now dinner is another story in itself. We have had some interesting dinners to say the least, like a hot dog onion tomato soup, pancakes with some meat (not terrible), and one night with dino eggs as we labeled them (meat inside this huge flour oval shaped thing). They def. missed the memo where all you need is chicken and we will be pleased. Luckily for me I’m not a terribly picky eater, but some of the guys have had a rough time with the food. We have been ordering pizza in almost every night. Hard to go to bed hungry knowing you have two workouts the next day.

The days were all pretty much the same in terms of workouts. We woke up and ran or lifted in the morning sometimes both and then practice would be every evening. We had to take small buses about 5 kilometers to the gym. It was pretty amazing that they made it to the gym everytime. The team has been coming together pretty well. I still believe we can be pretty good, we have a lot players that can create miss match problems. Our point guard is about 6’4” and we just go up from there. We have been scrimmaging a lot in the practices which I love. I feel that is far more important then drills at this point in the career. I have been shooting lights out right now which I am very pleased with and def. hope that keeps up. I also have been dealing with some knee soreness I think from running on these different terrains. We had today off (Sunday) and it has been very good for the legs. We will head to Lithuania on Wednesday to play two games and start a very busy pre season schedule. We will play 13 games in the next five weeks before the start of the actual season.

We had a chance to go on a boat ride the other day on the lake, but it really did not turn out the way I was hoping. We had to sit on the boat like you were on a horse (pictures below) and then the guy tried to tell us how fast it went while he was taking unnecessary turns. If the goal was to get everyone motion sickness I believe he succeed with getting about half of the team. He also made about 5 sailboats mad as he sped by about hitting two of them. The funniest part about the trip was when one of the teammates put on the life vest and pulled the red cord. It was one of the jackets that you only pull the cord like after you fall in the water. It started inflating and everyone just started laughing historically. The boat driver looked like he wanted to punch him in the face. While that is not the only comedy we have had for the week it was the major one. This team seems to get along very well and we should have a fun year.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

I Have ARRIVED

2008-08-14T21:26:00.002+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I have decided to write the first part about my trip from the plane. One reason is because I wanted to listen to the music on my computer and not run the battery on my PSP all way down. I made a rookie move by not having it all the way charged before I left. I was going around the airports looking for ports. The second reason being that the entertainment system on board is from 1984. It has one screen for the economy class that is the size of my computer screen. They have played one new movie (what happens in Vegas) and the rest have been cartoons from 1978 and a show about parrots. Of course it has been hard to watch with people standing in line for the restroom and small girl who has been screaming since we left. The start of the trip went very well. I was able to escape paying $75 in luggage fees for having too much weight and too many bags. The computer was down or something the attendant said (I think he just liked looking at my finance). I met up with drew in O’Hare and we boarded shortly after that. Even though the plane is from WWII they did manage to have some good chicken and rice. I am going to attempt to get some sleep, but I am right next to the screen and it is a little too bright for me. I can definitely say I am a little more excited already just because I have someone else that I can communicate with the whole time. I lost no bags and had a ride from the airport when we landed. Now if Poland is as good as the start of this trip we should be just fine.

We are about four days in and things have been pretty well. We will not have our apartments until after we return from training camp, which is about an eight hour trip away. The hotel they have us in is right on the beach. You have to go through a path in the forest and then there is the beach. We have been doing some running out in the forest and on the beach. There are a ton of trails and then you go over the hill and there is the beach. The Baltic Sea is pretty cold. Drew, Skip, and I took a late night swim around 9 pm. We used it as a cold whirlpool, but it felt really good once we got out. People were staring at us like crazy. I compare it to Lake Michigan in September and October. The hotel takes care of all three meals with breakfast and dinner buffets and then a sit down lunch were they bring the food like family style. I have not had a meal I have not liked yet. They like there meats and soups which sits well with me. If you are wondering if I have had in polish sausage (kabasa) the answer would be yes. I believe I have had it three out the four days in different ways or instances. The first time was in my soup, the second time was out at a hotel bonfire, and the third was as the main course for dinner.

The arena we play in is not huge but has a nice floor. The cool thing about the stadium is there is an indoor water park on the other side that we get to go in for free (three hot tubs and slides that come out of the building). Practices have been pretty light as we have been missing two other players and not had enough to play 5 on 5 yet. I guess camp is like 8 hours away in a town that has absolutely nothing but a gym and a fitness center around more forest and lakes. I have seen many areas that have reminded me of the episode in band of brothers when they are just blowing up all the trees in winter time. If you have never seen Band of Brothers I will take this opportunity to suggest it, a wonderful series about Para troopers during world war two. Ok, back to basketball, after the 10 days of camp we play two games in Lithuania and then make the trip back home. Then it seems things really big up after that with two or three tournaments before the start of the season which starts the 27th of September I believe. The coach seems to be really laid back and a great guy. He just finished playing last year and went straight into coaching. He is German and speaks very little polish so he tries to figure things out as well sometimes.

So hopefully the next update I will be in my apartment with internet and all settled instead of living out of these suitcases. Some funny observations so far have mostly been on the beach. It is a very small city beach and people put up little fences to claim there territory. We also witnessed an older man trying to jump and run from the waves. The third terrible observation was two guys in thongs flying a kite or hitting a ball. Quite frankly I do not remember what they were doing cause I was too busy puking the other way. They also tie their cows down. I know that is random but making the 1 hour trip from the airport to the city I saw about 15 cows who were leashed like a dog to graze. We also ran on the beach that took us into a part that was a nude beach. Saw many naked people there that I wish I had not seen. Overall, what I have seen Poland has been very rural. The town we are in has a lot of people right now, but all the teammates said they are German tourists and by season time the town is empty.

I have pictures but will not let me upload so i will do that next time!

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Heading to Poland

2008-07-28T17:22:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,
It is a couple days after the first annual “BC’s 3 on 3 classic” and I am very excited about the future of the event. The tournament went off with very minimal interruptions. We did misplace 8 gold trophies, but we have since found those and corrected the mistake. The four Butler guys (Brian, Julian, Pete, and Nick Brooks) did a great job of officiating and monitoring the courts, also had a lot of other friends from high school as well as my folks keeping everything organized. I don’t believe I received any complaints and I can’t count how many people said they really enjoyed it. Even though we did not have as many teams as we were hoping for there were still a lot of people down there and it felt pretty full. Not to pat myself on the back but I am going to, but it would not have been so successful with out a lot of people behind the scene. I am just humbled that I have been able to use my name to promote a sport I love as well as help a great organization in the process. The numbers are not final but I believe I was able to raise about $1500 for the club, which any money was going to be great. I have made some notes on some improvements and I am ready for next year.

I’m not sure if many of you have heard but I have signed to go to Poland. Kotwica Kołobrzeg S.A is the official team name. I’m not exactly sure how to pronounce it yet, but I do know it is on the beach in North West Poland. I have researched it a little and know there is a large health spa around the town. Not sure on much else except I should have an extra bed if anyone would like to come and visit. I am going over there with two other players (Skip Mills, Drew Namiac). Skip played at ball state and I have known him for a while. Of course we had battles with the rivalry with butler and ball state and he is also from the Indianapolis area. Drew Namiac played at Michigan State and I just met him this year. He is a very strong center and a great passer; I look forward to playing with both of them. I am scheduled to head over there on August 10.

I will be heading to the jimmy buffet concert and a houseboat trip to Lake Cumberland this week which will make the last couple weeks fly by. The summer actually seems like it went by pretty slow. I was able to do a lot this summer so I am kind of looking forward to going back to Europe and experience another culture all over again. The next time this is updated I will be Poland telling you how crazy life is.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Has it been two weeks?

2008-05-19T18:23:00.000+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I think the poll voted for me to update the blog every two weeks in the summer. As you can see I have not been able to keep up with that pace. I don’t believe I have stayed in the same place three nights in a row yet. Workouts, Washington D.C. trip, and the BC classic have kept me pretty busy.

The Hamstring feels like it is a 100% and I have been back in action close to three weeks now. I started working with a strength and conditioning coach who owns Pur-athlete. It is a supplement company offering products that have no banned substances. I got hooked up with him through my agent and was working on fixing my hamstring, but I also liked the things we were doing so I decided to stay with him all summer. I also have been working out basketball wise with some of the assistant coaches at Butler and at home. It has been nice because Pete Campbell from Butler signed with my agent so he and I have been able to workout together. The recruiting or viewing process is also starting this week as a coach from Ukraine will be at a workout on Wednesday to look at us. I’m pretty open to play anywhere again. I will not be heading back to the team in Sweden. There are a couple reasons for this. The first being I would like to move up to a bigger league and also they are looking for a center and guard. A quick side note on the Sodertalje team is they lost in the semi-finals and Solna (the team with Brandon McKnight from Purdue) won it all.

Some random news is I am now engaged to Morgan who I have dated for almost six years now. The wedding is not scheduled until 2010 because of me playing overseas and also she will be finishing up school and rotations next summer. Morgan and I took a trip to D.C. with my second dad for police week. They have a candle light vigil and a memorial service on the capitol lawn. Both services were very cool and we were lucky enough to have V.I.P. seating for the service on the lawn. Also while we were out there we took a tour through the capitol building and also toured all over the city on the old trolley. It was Morgan’s first time to D.C. and she loved it. We stayed in old town Alexandria which is a really cool place as well. If you are ever there I recommend eating at the chart house which is a seafood place that has one of the best salad bars I have ever seen. Also, a place I would not recommend is the national aquarium. It is in the basement of the Hoover building and cost five dollars. You would be better off spending that five dollars anywhere else in the city, even giving it to a homeless man would give you greater satisfaction. Overall it was a whirlwind of a trip as we left Tuesday evening and returned Friday morning, but it was a very cool trip.

The BC 3 on 3 classic is shaping up very well. I should have brochures out by later this week. If anyone who reads this knows of players who would like to play please let me know. I have been trying to get sponsorships and it has been going very well. I believe there are a lot of potential sponsors who are interested so just waiting to here back from them. I am very excited about this event and should be a very cool environment with current and past Butler players officiating some of the courts and just being there.

I have a couple of trips coming up, one to Florida where Julian and I will be visiting Brian Ligon, A family trip to Tennessee and another one to West Virginia. My younger brother graduates on Saturday. Things will be picking up fast and I’m ready for some more summer weather.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now

Quick Update!

2008-04-07T03:57:00.001+02:00

Hello Everyone,

I have been home for about a month now. I guess I did not pay attention to the poll since I am just now updating the blog. You never know how much you miss home until you return. I believe I have gained about 10 pounds since I have been home so that is a plus. Many people would prob. think the opposite but I was getting pretty slim. My mother said she not making any more dinners because she is not used to eating like me (I hope she was kidding).. I have been all over the place since returning.

The flight home was excellent except for the guy who was trying to lie all over me. I made it back in time to see Butler win the Horizon league tournament. It was very enjoyable to see the team get that done. Of course it did not help there seeding much which was a completely different story. I really thought they were going to pull out the Tennessee game. They had a great year and have nothing to be ashamed off. They were apart of the two most successful seasons in butler history. I also took a little road trip to St. Louis, Memphis, and Nashville. That was quite a lot of driving but the yellow jeep came through (1,100 miles I believe). It will be an easy April as I will just be contacting sponsors and working out to get back in shape.

The hamstring seems to be mostly healed and I will be testing it a lot this week. I still have plenty of time but I would like to really have a great summer. I have been talking with some of the butler seniors about my experience and my agent. It would be pretty cool to get on the same team with any of them. It sounds like Pete and Mike will be the two trying to continue playing.

The Södertälje kings have moved into the semi finals and plays the team we had the most fits with during the season.

Till next time!

This is BC gone for now