Winning is Fun!

Winning and playing well at the same time is even more fun!

We played Handlova yesterday which is a team that was one game behind us in the standings. Beating them would mean we were separating ourselves from the bottom teams in the league. A loss would mean there are a whole lot of teams really close together as we all fight for two final playoff spots.

We really approached this game with a playoff style attitude and it showed in our defense. There was a lot of movement and a lot of hustle. In the first half we really scrapped and it would have been better if we controlled the defensive boards. Nevertheless, we went into the locker room at halftime up nine points. We outscored them by 10 in the first quarter and they outscored us by one in the second quarter.

Personally, I made a goal for myself that I was going to be active on every possession. I wanted to scrap on the boards and for loose balls. I wanted to be aggressive taking the ball to the basket and if I was open on the outside I was going to shoot it whether it was going in or not. Now, it is a lot easier to make a goal for yourself than to go out and accomplish it and I knew it was going to take a lot of energy to accomplish. Thankfully I was up to the task today and so was our team. In the first quarter I got out on the fast break which was something our team has the ability to do but wasn't doing as well as it should. I scored eight points in the first all on drives to the basket and getting out on the fastbreak. I hit a three pointer in the second and got a free throw to go down for 12 points at the half.

Going out into the second half I just wanted to make sure I stayed aggressive. If I play aggressive defense it means I play aggresssively on offense so I tried to put a lot of pressure on the ball in the third quarter. The great thing was that our entire team seemed to do the same thing. We scored a game high 28 points in the third quarter, most of them coming on the fast break from turnovers that we caused. The third quarter was a lot of fun for me because I also had two dunks. The first one came on the first possession of the quarter when I ran a backdoor cut and the center was guarding the man at the free throw line. That meant an open basket and a nice two handed dunk, which seemed to set the tone for the rest of the game. Later one of our players blocked a shot at the top of the key and tapped it upcourt which I ran down. Then I did a simple two handed dunk but just tried jumping as high as I could and dunking it as hard as possible.

We went into the fourth quarter up 17 points and it was a matter of taking care of business down the stretch.
Don't think that a 17 point lead with ten minutes left means the game is over because over here everyone from the one position to the five position can hit threes. The did make a run where they scored about 8 points in about 30-40 seconds, but we managed to continue scoring.

All in all I felt like we played really well as a team tonight. Vince who is our power forward had a solid game with 19 points, and David Toya a Slovak national player that we added at the middle of last month played outstanding and finished with 27 points and great stats accross the board.

I personally had probably my best game since I have been in Slovakia. I had 29 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 steals. Every statistic was above my season averages. I also shot 11-19 from the field.

I look forward to our next game in a week and hope that we can play well enough to get another victory.

I will probably make one more post sometime this week about the basketball over here.

Thanks for reading...