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...