Home Stretch!

Two more games remain in the regular season of the Turkish League so playoffs are in site! Most of the time, players are run down and tired as it nears the end of the season, but when playoffs start it is another whole story. There is a sense of excitement as the playoffs are what we've worked hard for all year. If we can win these last two games, we will secure our 1st place in the league meaning all important home court advantage throughout the playoffs. We just played and beat my old coach's team yesterday. They are the 2nd place team so to have led the whole game and come away with a solid win is encouraging for our team even when we didn't play to our best potential. We did however, lose to Samsun, another top 3 team a couple weeks ago which means if we meet up with them in the playoffs, we will start the series at 1-1 as opposed to 1-0 if we had swept them. Just making it a little longer and tougher on ourselves but nothing we aren't capable of.

This time of year is just exciting in general because of tourney time in the states as well. I will try to watch as many games as I can during March Madness. Stanford won outright the Pac-10 championship for I don't even know how many years in a row now claiming Pac-10 player and coach of the year as well. Hoping they continue to dominate in the Pac-10 tourney and NCAA tournament.

I am also looking forward to the arrival of Seb, an old Stanford teammate of mine and Nicole's. She will be here for a couple weeks to visit. Then in a month my parents will be making a visit. Good times ahead!

Catching up

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.

All-Stars

After winning our last Turkish league game of the first half of Turkish League the All-Star game was played in a city in Northern Turkey. It is Turkish all-stars vs. Americans or Foreigners. Last year I played on the Foreigner team, but after getting my passport this summer I was on the Turkish side. We hung in with the all powerful mighty Americans for most of the game but lost it by a few points in the end. It was mostly a game for entertainment so we hope we gave the fans something to be excited about. The city did a good job of putting together the other entertainment. We had a famous Turkish singer for the half time show. I felt out of place when all of my Turkish teammates joined in singing and I had no clue what she was saying.

After the short time to relax and have a fun game we were back to Turkish league and won our next two games. The last one was against my former team at my old gym. it was good to see some familiar faces on and off the court. We are starting playoffs for Euroleague this Tuesday. We will face a great team from Poland. It is a best of 3 series with the first game at home, the second game in Poland and if necessary the third game back in Istanbul.

On another note we got a new player after the break. Our team terminated the contract with our French player and added Katie Smith. She is a veteran in the WNBA, olympic gold medalist, WNBA champion and MVP. Needless to say we think we got a pretty good player. I am excited to play with her the rest of the season.

Awesome Vacation

We lost our last 2 games before we went home for Christmas but I quickly forgot about those on my plane ride back to the states to enjoy a nice 11 day break. And it was as good as it could be. I flew into Chicago where my dad was waiting for me to drive to South Bend, Indiana. My entire mom's side of the family made it in from all over the country to be together for a few days at Christmas. This is pretty rare as there about 30 of us. It was great to relax and catch up with relatives I haven't seen for a while. The only downer was I was battling back from being quite sick before I left Istanbul. And as a X-mas present I think i passed it along to my dad. The weather was also freezing the entire time. My grandparents have said the ice storm that hit after Christmas was the worst they've seen in 40 years. Cars literally couldn't get out of neighborhoods because of the ice on the roads. Luckily we escaped without any incidents.

After the 28th, I met up with my Stanford teammate, Clare, in Chicago where I spent the next five days until returning to Turkey. I saw about 7 friends from Stanford. I couldn't have had a better holiday, I just wish it could have been longer. Lots of great memories from this holiday but now I'm back to reality in Istanbul getting ready to play our last game of the first half of the season against Cankaya.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. Hope 2009 is a great one!