The morning started with a meeting with the organizers of the tour. Jeremy and I listened while they told us they were disappointed that the team fell so far behind. They said it wasn't entertaining when one team was too far ahead. They believed it was because two of the players scheduled to make the trip did not. They do not believe 8 men can be effective. (They may have a point there, but John Calipari did a decent job with 5 this year). They were giving Jeremy a very hard time about it. He assured them he had been working to get players but one was just arriving home from a different tour, and one had stood him up completely.
When we awoke this morning we had a 9th player. Segun had gotten in just in time for breakfast and the morning walk through. He is a beefy 6'8” with a resemblance to Shaq, bald head, tightly groomed beard, broad smile. My first thought was he was probably slow. My second thought was wondering how many people in the world look at guys and decide how quickly they can run 94 feet. I am leaning toward a low number.
The walk through went smoothly enough. The thought of the day was, "if you keep doing what you’re doing, you will keep getting what you’re getting." I wanted the players to know that the mistakes we made last night will continue to haunt us. They really needed to look at how they played and make some new decisions. In the passing line we incorporated "thank you", phonetic "shay shay", so after each passer called the named, the receiver would thank the passer in Chinese.
The afternoon was a time to get some rest, get caught up on the daily updates, and get ready for the tonight's game against China. The updates have been difficult to write as the word processing app has not been as seamless as I had hoped. I showered and decided there was plenty of time for a nap before the 5:15 bus. The team would be meeting at 4:30 for dinner.
When I opened my eyes I could hear the ever present honking of horns from the street. I am on the 11th floor of the hotel. I languished for a second and decided to check my phone for time and messages. It was 5:10. What!? OMG as the young people would say. I dashed about the room throwing my suit and tie and gathering my shoulder bag and zooming down to the lobby like a cartoon character racing away from a bomb. I hit the lobby and our interpreter, Mr. Lee, says, "I like you, you are always first." If he only knew.
The arena is about 30 minutes away. It is a modern looking building on the campus of a large university. The province has approximately 13 million people, and the city of Changhzou about 5 million. I would guess the seating capacity to be about 8,000. Big screen, really big screen TV's provide scoreboard and entertainment. There is a cheer/dance team with uniforms that are the same orange color as Hooter's (yeah I know, I go there just for the wings also), they even have cheesy time out entertainment featuring yo-yo masters and such. Ah, showbiz.
 |
| Coach Beebe inspects game ball. |
Tonight it is important to get off to a good start. We need to be a good show, but more importantly this group of guys needs to taste some success before the pettiness of losing sinks in.
We make the first basket after winning the tap. But that was the highlight of the first quarter. We fall behind and run uphill the next 10 minutes. The second quarter features the insertion of a top level Chinese guard. He is from this province and attended this university. The crowd goes wild as he walks onto the floor. My thought is this could get pretty bad, pretty quickly. He misses his first two shots, but the crowd lets him know they don't care by cheering every time he touches the ball. He doesn’t miss the third, or fourth or fifth. At one point, he gets a break away. Chris is chasing him down from behind and I think he might be able to get a block. The star steers out of the path of the basket, dribbles to the three point line with Chris in tow and spins and makes it. He makes Chris look foolish and the crowd explodes. We lose the second quarter by 22.
The third quarter is better, or maybe the Chinese are playing their second level players. The score narrows to 13. There is a dribble drive right down the lane and Kyle rotates and takes the guy out. Normally I would applaud such a play in the middle of comeback. However, the player lays on the ground for bit milking the situation like a soccer player in the box. I sub for Kyle. I feel like we might have some kind of international situation as we were specifically told not to be overly physical with this team.
I sub in Segun. He looks bewildered just checking in and I know this is going to be a long quarter and a half. I keep Kyle on the bench for the rest of the game to placate the tour organizers hoping that a DNP-CD would please them. The comeback is over and the final score is China 82-Australia 54.
After all, tomorrow is another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment