Greek Tales

Looking back on Greece, it was a great experience and something that I will never forget. The history there is just amazing and to be able to spend it with my "Minnesota family" made it even better. I'm just going to go over a bunch of observations that I made while being there for a week.

- The Greek people are very similar to people in NYC. Things can get a little confrontational and that's the norm. No one gets offended by it. That's just the way it is.

- Many of the people there can speak and understand English. They have learned it from the time they were in elementary school. It's too bad that isn't the case in the US with languages.

- The Greek people like to strike and protest. Is it because they are lazy? Levon Kendall said that when we were talking to him before our game. He had been there for three years, he would have a better grasp of things then I would.

- Just like many big cities, if you act like a tourist people will target you whether it be to buy goods, stealing something from you, or mugging you.

- Athens was very crowded. Even more so than in NYC (with the exception of Times Square). People are in cars, trucks, four wheelers, motorcycles, and scooters. It's not unusual to see people on scooters on the sidewalks.

- Prices are sneakers were much higher. I'll give an example. The Nike Air Max 360 is $160 here in the States. It is priced at 170 Euros there. Essentially, the shoe is over $200. I wouldn't even go that high to buy a pair.

- The double line on the road doesn't mean anything. The slower car just gets to the right more and lets you go past. It seemed to be an understanding that the car coming from the opposite direction knows to get over as well. There were many times there were two cars and our bus hitting the same area at the same time.

- People are just plan skinnier there. Serving size is a lot smaller than it is here in the States (obviously there are exceptions).

- The Greeks are trying to restore a lot of the archeological sites to their original state. I do understand this but I would've rather have seen just the ruins instead of all this new stuff.

Basketball Stuff

- Three steps are the norm when getting to the rim. It took our guys a while to get use to this.

- They let the bigs play. Any hand check by the guards will be called.

- It's called a little different as far as pivoting goes. Even if you have established a pivot foot you can't extend to get to the rim. You have to dribble before any movement to the basket.

- Defense seemed to be an option for the players. If they wanted to play it great, if they didn't, no big deal. I think that is reason why we scored a lot and won all of our games.

- The wider lane forces some of our sets to a change a little but it help our guys with others.

- Starting in October, FIBA is changing to the NBA lane line (a foot wider on each side compared to the college game) and extending the three point line to get it closer to the NBA line. Right now the lane is trapezoidal and the three point line is a little shorter than the men's college three.

That's all that I can think of now. Overall, it was a great trip and for the first time ever I can say that I'm happy to be back in Minnesota.