Serbia Day 9

Day 9 is in the books. Been another busy day. Wake up was relatively early and then on to breakfast. Same old same old breakfast and back to get ready to leave. It is getting tougher to get ready in the morning because we have 8 guys in 1 little apartment. Some of the guys tried to tough it out with no shower curtain but now all 8 use the bathroom by my bedroom because the communications guys bought a shower curtain and put it up. It’s a hectic morning.
So we hop on the bus and it is off for what thay say is a 2 hour drive. It took us 90 minutes. As we get on the bus our team doctor gets everyone’s attention and tells us that there is a case of H1N1 or the swine flu in our village and turns out is an Aussie guy who is in the same compound. He said they caught it early and the athlete is better now so there should be nothing to worry about. If anyone gets that with our team you can bet on it being me!
Back to the drive it took us through Belgrade and out to the country side with a police escort all the way. They don’t mess around either. If there isn’t a lane, they create one and force people out of the way. There has been more than one close call. Even though some of the players were dreading the drive it was quite nice. Along the way there were many farms and a few nice little villages. In every little village there seemed to be a huge church. Very nice. Also the crops that were planted were corn and sunflowers. At some points there were sunflowers for miles and miles like a yellow carpet. All of them with their flowers pointed at the sun. It was neat to see as I have never ever seen that before.
We arrived in the town of Vrsac where we would play our game. It was a very pretty little town with an amazing arena and it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The daunting task of beating Australia was facing us. We came out with more energy and had a chance for some easy hoops early but couldn’t convert. They jumped all over us and made us pay for mistakes. 23-10 after the first quarter. WE didn’t get closer than that the rest of the way. We played much , much tougher defensively and forced them to change up some of their offensive sets. We banged with their bigs and took most of their guards out of their comfort zone. At the other end we had their bigs in foul trouble but when one 6’4” girl got a foul, another one came off the bench. They were all big and skilled. As I surmised after the game, it was a game of inches. Our passes were 6-8 inches away from where we needed them to go and the defense either stole it or got a touch on the ball. It made it very tough to run our offense at times. On their end, their passes were mostly crisp and well located leading to scores and easy shots. They are more talented than us in the frontcourt perhaps but their backcourt is fairly average. They aren’t flashy and they don’t turn the ball over a lot. The biggest difference seemed to be crispness. That comes from meeting in Serbia and having 3 one hour practices and 2 scrimmages to get ready for an international tourney. On the contrary, Australia was together for a bit before arriving, flew here a week earlier and had 2 practices a day during that time. It is a sad state of affairs in our country that Basketball has no funding. We can support waterpolo but no basketball. I am biased but maybe that funding is a bit wrong. I read a report recently that said that smaller countries like Serbia and Kazakhstan actually provide more funding to their basketball programs than Canada does. We are a third world basketball nation and that is sad. I am not saying we would have beaten Asutralia with more prep. We would have battled tougher but I know we could have beaten Japan and Slovakia. Sorry for the rant, back to the game.
In the second half we were down 16 to start. WE had 3 really good defensive possessions and created 3 easy looks at the other end but couldn’t score. It was that type of day. We could have cut it to 10 and made the game a little different but they pulled away and defeated us 80-50. Kelsey was quite average today scoring only 6 points and going only 2 for 6 from the free throw line. I can’t remember ever seeing that before. They had her scouted and had a longer athlete guarding her making it very tough. The test for her will be how she bounces back from this experience. The toughest part of this trip for the players is not the physical aspects but the mental ones.
So after the game we board the bus and head off back to Belgrade. A nice drive in the sunshine. Once we were in the city there was lots of traffic and more close calls but we made it back in one piece.
With the loss we are now relegated to the bottom 8 in the tourney or as we coaches like to call it, the “Toilet Bowl”. This reminds me of my early years at CBU and heading to the Dal tourney every year. We knew going in we’d have that 6:30 AM wakeup call for the 9AM game vs Acadia. Times have changed though.
When I got back I started prepping video for our next opponent which will be Hungary. We play them on Sunday at 3PM Cape Breton time and then Mozambique on Monday at 10AM Cape Breton time. The final two games will be decided by our results in these games. We need to play well with a goal of winning the bottom round. After watching the tourney, it is impressive to see what some of the countries can do on the court. They have an impressive array of skills and they execute so well. There will be some dandy games in the final round.
Supper tonight was fairly good with a funny moment thrown in there. I asked a young man working the buffet what something was. He said zucchini and beef but it didn’t look like zucchini with beef. I asked him for a little bit and he heaped it on my plate. I said “a little bit” and he said “it’s not a little bit but you will eat it” and I did so good call my Serbian friend. After supper Linda and I went for a walk to the grocery store in the mall to check things out and pick out a few treats. Some very interesting selections. I will bring some back for people to sample. We then came home and met to watch the video to prepare for Hungary.
Tomorrow is an “off day” with no game. We get up for 9am breakfast and then I’ll make the final prep of the video. We practice at 2pm and then grab a quick meal and head to the Belgrade arena for the evening. We will watch our men play China and then the girls will leave but I will stay to watch the men’s game with Serbia and Australia. Looking forward to it.
So another tiring day, another defeat but I saw real progress especially at the defensive end. Things are slowly getting better.
Catch you tomorrow
Coach