Italy Trip

Men's Basketball
1670

Final game thoughts:

  1. I spent the day hiking around the area from Rapallo to Portofino and back to Santa Margherita Ligure. The hike was awesome, a trail through the hills between houses and olive trees. I took a dip at Paraggi beach where every inch of the 10 yards of public beach was full and 90% of the private beaches’ chairs were empty. I saw Portofino’s many yachts and lookie-loos. I don’t get the appeal. I got to the gym more than an hour before the game and the Serbs were shooting. UVA showed up shortly after.

  2. Pregame I talked a bit with Zay, Sodie, and Getter, mostly about me, so I won’t bore you.

  3. Sodie pointed out the Italian guy who scouts Europe for the Wizards to me.

The scout said he likes Kadin. He isn’t sure if Kadin’s NBA or G League material, but expanding his range to the point that he has to be respected from 3 would help. Kadin does warm up 3s pregame, and he has already attempted as many this preseason (1) as all of last season.

He likes Beeks. The question is shooting.

He said he was eager to see the freshmen who were out last game. Between overtimes I asked about the freshmen, and he said he liked what he saw from Bond.

For the Serbs, he said their star Djurisic is projected as a lottery pick next draft but he doesn’t see it. He thinks his game won’t translate. Djurisic and Papi went nose-to-nose twice in the game. The first time Papi got called for a foul fighting for an OR, but I think he thought the two Serbs boxing him out were fouling him. He and Djurisic kept jawing well past the whistle and had to be separated. Papi was immediately subbed out to cool him off. I don’t know what caused the second altercation, but it was more of the same jawing with their faces an inch apart. Djurisic had 17 points on 4/6 2s, 1/3 3s, and 6/6 FTs in 37 min through the first OT.

  1. I sat with a coach’s wife, the chaplain’s wife, a few other ladies whose connection I didn’t catch and the video guys. One guy videos the whole game and at each stoppage sends the videos to the other guy to code. Not sure the coding they do, but it is all coded by game’s end and ready for the coaches.

The ladies were way into the game, which made things more fun.

  1. I kept 3s and TO stats because last game that was the info I wanted about the other team. (BTW from first game box score, Mega was 13/27 on 3s with 16 TO.)

Beeks 1/2
BVP 1/9, 1 TO (although the turnover was after standing on the line when he got an OR)
Dunn 1 TO
McKneely 3/4
Kihei 1/4, 2 TO
Traudt 1/5, 2 TO (one was a held ball off a bad pass from Beeks that he almost got possession of)
Murray 2/3, 4 TO
Bond 1 TO
Papi 3 TO

9/27 as a team on 3s, 14 TO

The other guys were 5/25 on 3s, 26 TO

  1. CTB got a tech or maybe he didn’t.

Mega got an offensive rebound in front of our bench while falling down. By American rules, it is a clear travel since both his feet moved in the fall. Someone told me by FIBA rules, it is only a travel if he rolls while on the ground. Refs didn’t call a travel, and while the guy is lying there looking to make a pass, our bench is getting louder and louder, yelling for a travel. Eventually the ref stops play and calls a tech on Tony. The other team gets one free throw.

But when I said to coach’s daughter excitedly, “Your dad got a tech!” She said, “No, it was on the bench.” And I do think she has a point that the ref seemed to motion more at the bench than CTB when calling it. (She also pointed out, “He’s gotten one before! Lucky T’ed him up.”)

  1. Our defense was way better today. In the first game, a ton of Mega’s 3s were uncontested. This game there always seemed to be a hand in their face. The 26 forced turnovers we cannot take much credit for, though, Mega was sloppy with the ball in both games.

We got killed on the glass. They had 18 OR to our 21 DR for an OR% of 46%. Our opponents’ OR% usually is low to mid 20s with last year at 28.8% being a very bad year for us. Mega was tall and aggressive, but I don’t know what else was leading to our problems on the glass. Sometimes we played only one big, but the vast majority of the game was with two.

  1. Our subbing was much more to win than in previous games. McKneely played more minutes than Dunn and Bond combined. But the 2OT lineup was Kihei Taine Bond Dunn Traudt.

  2. Kihei was the MVP. He took over in 2OT. Several drives, my favorite of which was when took a lap and a half around the key. He went under the basket but kept his dribble a la Steve Nash, kept circling, got back to the basket and this time took it up to score.

He was torching them so badly that they ran a double team at him late in 2OT to get the ball out of his hands. He had 10 in the second OT alone, mostly on lay ups but one pull up long 2 in transition after a steal. He had several steals and drew another turnover by being pesky and causing his opponent to shove him away.

  1. Papi was huge on the offensive glass until he fouled out after 26 minutes of action. He finished with 9 points and 5 boards.

  2. Game flow: we were leading by single digits almost the whole way but Mega made a late run. It was tied with about 30s left in regulation, and we had the ball. Coach called a time out. I yelled at Papi in Spanish as the huddle broke, “You’re dominating. You’re going to win this with a rebound.” Next play, Kihei has a great drive but the ball rims out. Papi cleans up the glass with the board and put back. Unfortunately that didn’t win the game as I had predicted because the other team hit a one-footed long two at the buzzer.

In OT, Mega was up one late when BVP hit a big three. Mega tied with a 2, then Traudt missed a three. On the ensuing possession BVP was whistled for fouling the shooter, a call our fans HATED. Mega hit 1/2 FT to go up 1 with 9s. On the final possession, Beeks took it all the way to the basket but was kicking the ball to the corner for a 3 when Mega was called for fouling him. We were in the bonus (like the NBA, 5 fouls in a quarter means 2 FT on every foul.) He hit 1/2 to send it to 2OT.

We blew them out in 2OT behind Kihei.

  1. I missed my train because of the OTs. After the game I went to the Santa Margherita Ligure station and hopped the next train. It wasn’t going to Genoa’s central station, only the outskirts. When I got off there, a nice young lady pointed me to the metro which took me the rest of the way. By this point my phone had died, so two nice Moroccan ladies pointed me to the right metro track. When I got to the central station, an Italian guy grabbed his son and ran away when I asked him to use google maps to tell me where my hostel was. Then two nice Italian ladies pointed me in the right direction and some Chinese guys pointed me the rest of the way.

The whole trip I stayed in hotels or Airbnbs, but for the final weekend, I went back to my hostel roots. I was already in a social mood when I arrived and @DFresh11 and his PayPal campaign had added $105 to my wallet. After a quick shower, I hit the packed bar where travelers and locals were belting karaoke. I asked the first two women I saw which table was having the most fun. They pointed to one. I asked the next two women the same question, and they said the same table. I took those two to the bar and bought a tray of drinks to take to said table.

Those people had no idea how they got so lucky. I tried to explain that my Uncle LRA had passed away and left me a small sum of money to spend immediately in a frivolous way. But one of them was still asking for an explanation at breakfast today so I don’t think the message got through. No matter. Many drinks were drunk and a good time was had by all.

  1. Go to the games in 4 years. You probably can’t justify it as a trip solely to see UVA but if you think about it as a two week tour of Italy’s (or Spain’s or wherever’s) great sites with 4-5 free games where you are sitting courtside and can meet fans, players, and coaches, it is SO worth it.

See you on the podcast.

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