Even at 30-years-old there is something exciting about getting on an airplane.

Playing professional hoops in Germany means a lot of time on the team bus.  We drive everywhere, so playing in a competition like EuroChallenge, where we travel mostly by plane, means feeling like I’ve hit the big time.

Our group (Group G) ended up being full of mostly northern and western European teams, but to be honest I would rather we had to travel then stay so close to home.  At least a trip to Turkey might mean some warm weather, and a chance to see a place I wouldn’t ordinarily get to visit.

It also means quality time with my teammates, which is important.  I’m lucky to be on a team full of guys who are interested in seeing and exploring the places we visit for games.  On a recent trip to Ludwigsburg for a BBL game, the whole team visited a local castle, but it’s even easier to do when you go outside of Germany, and I hope playing in EuroChallenge will give us a lot of opportunities for these trips.

Unfortunately those little bags of peanuts and the duty free shop would have to wait.  Game one of our EuroChallenge season was in Antwerp, which is only 300 or so kilometers from Artland, and meant a bus trip made more sense than flying.

Antwerp is an interesting city. I looked it up on Wikipedia and saw that they have a harbor and some other interesting historical sites.  Just about everybody on the team wanted to do a little site seeing, but the weather wouldn’t cooperate.  It was stormy and raining the entire time we were there so we decided to stay at the hotel and get some rest instead, it was a decision that paid off on the court.

I got to start against Antwerp Giants and even though it might not show up on the stat sheet I was satisfied with my performance.  I just tried to feed the big men, play good defense and not make any big mistakes, which I managed to do.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to score 10 or 15 points a game, but for me winning is the most important thing and a win is what we got, though it was far from easy.

We were down 10 points with about six minutes to play and it looked like we might go home with a loss, but a couple of our players like Ronald Ross, Toby Bailey and Darius Hall, stepped up big time and we ended up taking the lead late and holding on for the win.

Next up for us is a home game against Tartu Rock, who won their first game as well, which means we are tied for first place in Group G. 

It’s going to be a tough, and important, game for us. If we win then it will make our first flight of the EuroChallenge season (to Wels in Austria for our December 8th game) all the more enjoyable.