Today consisted of us taking a two hour bus ride to head to Epidaurus, the site of the popular Sanctuary of Asclepius. It is a huge theater with unbelievable acoustics. A couple of our guys headed all the way to the top of the theater and could hear our tour guide drop a coin on the ground as well as her tearing a newspaper. It was quite amazing.
After this we headed to a ruin in the countryside. It was here where Greece's first capital was located. They built a castle that many of it's original pieces where still there. The views from this area were great. We also got to see a "cave" that the Greeks developed not far from the castle. It is just unreal to think how these ancient people could move that amount of rock all over the place. I couldn't imagine to view the Pyramids in Egypt in person.
After catching a quick lunch we heading over for our game versus Ilissiakos Basketball Club. We were under the impression that this was going to be our easiest game of the tour. When we walk into the gym, we once again see 6'8" and 6'9" again and these guys look young. Not only were they that big, they were very skilled as well. Not exactly what I was hoping for in my coaching debut. These guys definitely passed the look test with their height and length. I was told from our tour guide, Yanni, that one of guys that is playing against us played on the U18 and U20 Greek National Team last summer. The same kid also plays on the pro team and makes a significant amount of money. We were in for a big time challenge.
I was able to speak to their head coach and he was a great guy. He was raised in Manhattan and attending Jersey City State for college. His whole family is over here and he has bounced back and forth since college. He told us that he is the pro team's assistant as well as the director of player development (for their younger players). He was coaching today because the pro team's head coach resigned and he is basically holding everything together.
Once the game started our guys really went after them. We challenged them at the rim and with our defense. We still had a bunch of mental lapses but are playing better for longer stretches than we have previously. I was really impressed once again with Brandon Rieg's play. He really got after defensively for the second day in a row and he really got our guys going. We made a push towards the end of the first half to push our lead to 13 after 20 minutes of play.
The second half started off with a bang as we really got after it and started finishing more than we did in the first. We are starting to make adjustments to the European game even though the three step non travel still frustrates us while we get called for traveling while catching on the run. We really started putting it on their team with a barrage of 3's and got our lead up to as many as 22. They called a timeout and then proceeded to go on an 11-0 run to cut the lead in half. Dan Andersen came in and hit three straight 3's and got our lead back up to 20 very quickly.
We ended up winning 84-62 against a very talented team (thought they didn't play as a team). I am not sure who lead us in scoring but as I said Brandon Rieg played really well. Dan Andersen and Christian Taber both hit a bunch of 3's and we got our usual double-double from Carl Hipp. Our guys really responded to the challenge today. I keep forgetting that we have six guys that just got done with their freshmen season. We are certainly making strides but we need to keep working.
Tomorrow we are heading to the National Musuem and getting a little free time before our game at 6pm. I am hoping to get some videos on the blog soon. Two are now uploaded on the youtube under my channel, hamlinembb. Check them out when you get a chance.
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