That wasn't part of the plan...

Well we lost game 1 by three points. Everybody played poorly. Game 2 is at their place on Wednesday.

Saturday was an off-day, and it was gorgeous out. I took advantage and went to Hagia Sophia and the Grand Bazaar again. Got some scarfs and some really cool black and white drawings of Istanbul. Great mementos.

This is a photo of Hagia Sophia.

Also, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (picture below with me and Alisa) are right across the plaza from each other. They literally face each other. It's pretty cool. Hagia Sophia used to be a church during Byzantine times, then it was converted to a mosque by the Ottomans. The Blue Mosque was built by Sultan Ahmed as a response to Hagia Sophia.

Won our last regular season game....

So we finished at 15-7 and secured 2nd place. We were tied with another team, but had the tiebreaker over them.

Tomorrow is game 1 of the first round of the playoffs. We are playing the 7th seed from the other conference. Don't know too much about them, should be a good game. It is a 3 game series.

Updates

Alisa's visit was awesome, it was great to not be alone all the time. Plus she brought me easter candy and a new pair of jeans!! New jeans for me is a once-every-other-year occurrence for me, so it was exciting for me. We had a great time, we were able to see a lot of things. Got to see Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque, and went to the Grand Bazaar a couple times too. The picture is in front of the Blue Mosque.

Going to the Grand Bazaar was great cause I don't like going alone. When I'm alone I'm an easy target for people to talk to me, or grab my coat to get my attention. But with someone I got bothered less. Plus, Alisa is a way better bargainer than me, so I saved some money too.

The only thing that sucked about Alisa's visit was the weather. Now that she is gone the weather forecast calls for a week of sun. There have been like, 3 non-rainy days while I've been in Istanbul.

After Alisa left we flew down to Izmir for our last regular season road game. We have one more home game, then playoffs. The coaches and management were nervous for the game cause we are battling for second place. The team we were playing was good, and they were really upset when they lost to us earlier in the season. Apparently their coach went nuts and yelled at our coach staff.

Anyway, the place was packed and the atmosphere was tense. The game started badly for us, a couple turnovers and a quick 7-0 run for them. Then I set a ballscreen, rolled to the hoop and caught a perfect bounce pass from a teammate. I jumped from the middle of the key and slammed it right on two of their players. I was clearly fouled, but whatever. Next play we came down, I got the ball on the wing, dribbled left toward the middle, spun baseline and threw in a 12 foot right hand hook. I went on my own personal 8-0 run and they called timeout.

The game was tight all the way. We were down 8 with about four minutes to go, but hit a couple threes and I dunked once to pull us even. With about 30 seconds to go we were up two, got the ball and hit a three in a scramble situation to put us up by five. There was no comeback after that, it totally deflated the other team. After the win we had to hurry cause our flight was in two hours. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but apparently we were about two hours...from the airport.

From the moment the game ended to the time we were showered, dressed and on the bus was no more than 6 minutes. We had given our bags to the team manager before the game, he left the game early to get our tickets and get our bags on the plane. This meant that, for all of us, our carry-ons were our sweaty basketball shoes and a plastic bag full of our still wet game gear. It was slightly embarrassing.

With the win we moved into a tie for second place. We hold the tiebreaker though, so we control our destiny. A win would get us 2nd, which is important for the playoffs. The club missed the playoffs last year, so the improvement is huge. Hopefully we will be able to do some damage in the playoffs.

I'm not forgetting about the blog...

it's just that Alisa is here, and I feel like if she travels across the world to see me I should probably pay attention to her.

As for quick updates, we won our home game on Friday, pushing us into third place. We have two games left in the season, away this weekend and home for the final game.

I'll post pictures and some stories after Alisa leaves.

Europe/Asia divide

My hotel is situated on the Bosphorus strait, which connects the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara (eventually the Mediterranean). It also splits Turkey into two land masses. The best example of this I can think of is Michigan. Except if the U.P. had one of the world’s premier cultural and historical cities.

But the most interesting thing about the Bosphrous is that it also serves as the Europe/Asia divide. This means that part of Turkey is in Europe, but the vast majority of it is in Asia. Istanbul is in the European side of Turkey.

So when I sit down to breakfast at my hotel and look out across the water, I’m sitting in Europe while looking at Asia.

Important win

This weekend we played on the road against the number 2 team in the conference. The bus trip was miserable, for our game Sunday we left at midnight(!) on Friday. We arrived around 9:30 the next morning. I didn’t sleep well; we were going through the mountains so the roads were not well maintained. Couple that with the uncomfortable seats and…yeah it sucked. But we powered through it.

We won the game in a blowout, by 20 points or so. It was some of the happiest two hours of basketball I’ve played in a long time. Happy seems like a strange way to describe it. But I can’t find a more basic word for what I felt.

We were without our starting point guard, playing the number 2 team in their house in front of a sold out crowd. And everything went our way. Guys who don’t normally make shots were hitting contested 3’s. My second shot was a turnaround 15-foot jumper on the baseline. It hit the front of the rim, bounced up and came down straight through the net. It was that kind of night. Every time they got up from the canvas and connected with a jab, we launched a series of body blows. With 10 seconds left in the first half they hit a 3-pointer to pull within 12. We brought the ball up quickly and our third string point guard hit a deep, deep 3 with a hand in his face. It had the effect of a well-timed, unseen left hook.

The fourth quarter plodded along. The refs, as refs in Europe are wont to do, attempted to make it a close game. We somehow managed a black eye, a bloody nose, an intentional foul and two technical fouls in one quarter. Rarely have I seen one of my teammates noses attack someone’s elbow so viciously. The free throw totals at the end of the game were a little absurd (Usak: 16-23, FMV Isik: 3-4). It’s rare that you win a game in which you shoot 19 fewer free throws.

There is no more beautiful sound than the respectful silence of a sold out crowd after you’ve thrashed their team.

We are now sitting in 3rd place with three games to go in the regular season...