Season. Over.

We traveled to Konya (home of Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes) for game two. The crowd was great, a packed arena that made me feel like I was playing basketball again. Unfortunately we just weren't good enough to win the game. We played them tough, but we had some foul trouble and lost a key player to a sprained ankle midway through the first quarter. Ended up having to play two players who haven't played more than 5 minutes all season...combined.

With the loss means the end of the season. I got a call from management today, my flight is tomorrow afternoon. Flying through Frankfurt to Boston. Hopefully I can get out of Frankfurt, but I don't know with all this volcanic ash floating around.

So now it's the offseason. Going to Peru and Chile with Alisa on April 25th, so that will be really cool. Other than that, who knows.

Thanks for following along this shortened season, hope the blog was not a total waste of your time!

2nd round and parents visit

We lost game 1 of the second round on Saturday afternoon. It was a close game, we ended up losing 54-51. As the score indicates this game was as much WWF as it was basketball. We are leaving tomorrow to go to their gym in Konya. It's a 10 hour drive, but I've heard we're flying so that's nice. The second round is the same format as the first, a best of 3 series.

Also my mom and dad have made it out to Istanbul! They got cheap tickets less than 48 hours before the flight took off, so they jumped on it and flew out here. They're doing a Rick Steeves tour, but came out 4 days early to see me and watch my game.

Their tour didn't start until today, so we spent yesterday sightseeing. Walked around Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque and Taksim Square. It was a good day. Hopefully the weather holds while they are here.

Game 2 is on Wednesday. Depending on the outcome, game 3 on will be on Saturday or I'll have a whole lot of free time on my hands on Thursday.

Next round!

Wow, we won a crazy game in double OT. It was nerve-wracking. I fouled out in the fourth quarter so I had to watch from the sidelines. We came back from 4 down and a minute to go in both regulation and the first overtime. Then in the second overtime we were down 85-79 with 2:32 to go when we took a timeout. A three, a steal and a layup led to a timeout by the other team. We ended up getting a few more stops and buckets and going up 91-85. We ended up winning 92-86.

So now we're moving on to the second round. I have no idea who we play, when we play, or where we're playing. I do know it's another 3 game series. So we'll see what happens.

The photo above was taken immediately after our victory.

Still alive...

We won game 2 on the road by three points. I played a lot better this time.

The last game of the series is at home on Saturday. Quick turnaround, but I can't wait to play it. I want a conclusion to this round.

After the game we went to a restaurant that is in the Guinness Book of World Records. It is the home of the largest kebab meat...thing. The kebab meat..thing..what's the (proper name for it???) weighed 2,698 KG. That's almost three tons!!

While we were at the restaurant my seat was facing a giant plasma TV that was playing a 4-minute TV news report on loop. The report was about the giant kebab (of course) and it was....DISGUSTING. I almost lost my appetite it was so bad. I didn't know how they made those things before, and I didn't want to know. But it's almost impossible to avoid glancing at the TV when you're sitting there with nothing but your own thoughts because everybody is speaking Turkish. Suffice it to say that I ate much less than anybody else. The team manager was bummed because he thought I didn't like it. Actually the taste was pretty good, but I can't get the images of a dozen people slapping and kneading raw, unidentifiable meat into a giant mass of dead animal.

Anyway, so we got game 3 in a couple days.