Sorry that I've been absent for about a month. Time flies when you're having fun right?;) Here are a few happenings in the last month.
In the round of 16 for the Euorleague playoffs, we matched up with a solid team from Poland. Each round is the best of 3 series and we had home court advantage so we hosted the first game. After being down 5 with just a couple minutes to go, we climbed back to force the game to overtime where we won it by a few points. The second game in Poland was close the entire way and we were leading with a couple minutes to go. But after a couple of bad turnovers we lost that game by 3 points. So that forced a 3rd game back in Istanbul where we won in none other than overtime! It was quite the exciting series to say the least. But our reward for advancing to the round of 8 was to match up with a Russian powerhouse team. This team will give Spartak (the all star Russian team we played earlier in the year) a definite run for their money. If you notice a trend of stacked teams from Russia then you are right on. They have big budgets and can therefore attract the best players. Anyways, we went to Ekaterinburg and lost by nearly 30 points. Personally, I had one of my best games of the year so it was a little bittersweet. We came back to Istanbul determined to give them a better game since we knew we were better than what we showed and did exactly that. We were winning by 17 points in the 3rd quarter before they started to show why they are one of the best teams in Europe. We let them back in the game and they took the lead late in the 4th quarter and our attempt at a 3 to force overtime failed. So now we are playing solely in the Turkish league for the rest of the year. Winning the Turkish Championship is our club's most important goal, so they brushed off the loss to the Russian team as long as we continue to win in the Turkish league.
Speaking of Turkish league.....we played our rival, Galatasaray before heading to Russia. This is one of the biggest rivalries in Europe for soccer so we get fans who might not care much about basketball but care about this rivalry so they were there in full force cheering for a win and throwing things on the court like they are expected to do. We expected it to be more of a game, but ended up beating them by nearly 30 points. When we play well like we did, there isn't any team in the league that can beat us. So our management was obviously pleased with the win.
The Galatasaray game was on Valentine's Day, so Nicole and I met up with some friends at a nice restaurant for dinner. It was a special meal for the holiday. We paid a flat rate and they kept serving us 4 or 5 courses of pasta, steak, salad, soup, dessert......and more dessert. And they gave us a gift as we left. It was a two headed shirt. So it's basically one shirt with two head holes for two valentine's to wear. On the shirt it said "Be my valentine." I thought it was pretty cute. We had a big table set up for more people to come but some bailed at the last minute so a couple of Turkish ladies sat with us at the end of our meal. We didn't speak Turkish and they didn't speak English but we seemed to have the best time. I'm not really sure how! Might have been the couple of cosmos we drank:)
Also, after a bit of Turkish drama that I will spare you the details of, our coach quit. But we got a new one the next day and after some adjustment on both parties' behalf we are fairly settled into a new system and new leadership.
That's it for now. I will try to update again sooner than a month from now!:)
P.S. Shoutout to my Cardinal racing to a first place finish in the pac-10!
P.S.S. the picture is of our 2 point loss to the Russian team at home and I've also added a few more pictures to the album "Turkey Round 2" in my pics link.
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