Championship Time - The final test!

Preseason

I won't lie to you.. it's been a long year.  The journey to this point has been full of ups and downs, starting with the first curve ball thrown back in July, when I didn't know if I was going to find a team for this season.  Low and behold, just as I was about to lose all hope on playing overseas again, an email from my agents finally came through giving me some good news - Osnabrück wanted me, and on a plane as soon as possible.  Sorry what?  As soon as possible!?  Yet, when an opportunity comes your way, sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and hope you're landing in nice, soft pillows and not sharp, pokey nails.  So, the next thing I knew, five days later I was leaving my job in San Diego with basketball shoes in hand and on a flight out to Germany.

Bye fun summer job making sure kids don't run away at the beach, hello 15 hour flight, new apartment, and preseason training.

From there, I unpacked my bags and settled into a month of preseason two a day training.  It wasn't so bad, but I was doing a lot of laundry... Our full team wasn't quite with us at this point, only the dedicated (the ones who still weren't on summer vacation).  But by the time our camp in Berlin rolled around at the end of August, we had our full squad and our American point guard, Angela Pace, on her way - AFTER she missed her first flight!! (Knowing Ang now, this doesn't surprise me)

The Berlin camp was awesome - well maybe not so much for Ang, who was a little out of shape and jet lagged.  However, naturally in the spirit of sympathy for my fellow American, I caught a terrible cold.  As you can well imagine, it is never fun being sick on the road - especially for your hotel roommate who secretly hopes they can sleep in a plastic bubble away from you.  It knocked me out for a good day and a half, but I wasn't going to let it keep me down and from experiencing a city with so much history!  *Pushes up nerd glasses* Plus, someone on our team had to be enthusiastic about doing a little preliminary research about all the cool things we were going to see.

Season

September was rather eventful, as we scrimmaged several first divison teams including Herne (who we would later face in the Final Four), Oberhausen (who ended up moving down this year), and Rotenburg (who ended up getting third place).  Apparently, this prepared us well for our first league test, as we blew our first opponent - Opladen - out of the water by 30 points.  We continued on our winning streak, but our margins of victory were getting smaller and smaller as the season progressed.  Finally, we were to play at the home of the ever-intimidating Göttingen Veilchen (flowers).  The game was very back and forth, but the flowers ended up getting the best of us and handing us our first loss going into Christmas break.

The second half of the season we lost two of our German posts and added Canadian import, Emma Dunkier.  This definitely changed the dynamic of our team, as you can only play 2 imports on the court at a time.  I was then moved from the guard to the post, which I secretly shed a few tears about as it was the first time in my career where I could play a true 3.  Then again, the 4 isn't a bad position either :)

Our first game back was against Pokal (cup game) competition - Heidelberg, who I played against last year in the DBBL 2nd League South.  We beat them at home, earning us a spot in the Final Four, which is quite the feat for a second league team!  It would be like a mid-major D1 school that you've never heard of making it to the Final Four for NCAA college basketball. The Final Four was to be hosted the last weekend in March, so until then we had quite a bit of league competition to be played.  Rounding out the second half of season we suffered a bad upset loss against a small farm town team by the name of Grünberg, lost once again to our flowery nemesis Göttingen, and an unexpected loss to Opladen at their gym.  This left our record going into play-offs at a solid, yet unexceptional, 18-4.

Top Four

Before we got serious in play-offs, we got to have a little fun in Germany's Final (Top) Four.  Our first opponent was Rhein-Main Baskets, an gritty first league team who is known for playing as a team rather than relying on the talent of their foreigners.  With the odds against us, we battled possession for possession with Rhein-Main until the second quarter when they literally could not miss and rained the threes down against us.  That dug us into a 20 point lead that we could not overcome, and a deficit we eventually lost by.  The next night we played the #2 team in Germany, Herne, who had talent at strength at every position.  We mustered every ounce of heart that we could compete with and made it a game until the very end, until one of their players hit three big threes to put them up by 8 as the buzzer rang.

Play-Offs

In the second league, only four teams make it to play-offs.  We took first place in the league so we were matched against 4th place Opladen, who narrowly edged out TG Neuss for that last spot.  On the other side, the flowers played the Wolfenbüttel Wolfpack, who was a strong opponent all season.  They battled it out for three games and Göttingen ended up taking the series as we sort of..well..rolled over Opladen in two games.

This takes us to the present, where we hosted Göttingen last Sunday at home for the first round of a best-of-three championship series.  The game got out to a shockingly terrible start, leaving the score at the end of the first quarter 9-25 with most of the team wondering who just played that first quarter, because it sure as heck wasn't us!  Anyway, it happens, and once you dig yourself that deep of a hole it's very difficult to see the light again... regardless of the odds, we battled back to within 2 by the end of the game and hope for an epic comeback win was glimmering in our sights.  But Göttingen is a strong team, and they weren't about to go home empty handed when they had come so far, and as you may have guessed (since we are about to play our third and final game) they clinched the first win of the series on our court.

We had no other choice but to review the film and analyze what went so terribly wrong.  In the end it really came down to lack of aggression in that first quarter - the aggressor ALWAYS wins.  So here we are, warming up for our second game in Göttingen (this past Saturday), thinking it could quite possibly be our last game together if we don't bounce back.  Fans wearing purple and white started pouring into the gym, and our little fan section wearing white, black, and red pounded the drums in the corner of the gym by our bench.  Their fans lined literally every side of the court and there wasn't a seat left open in the gym.

Do or Die

From beginning to end, the game was the most physical we had played all year, and it felt like at times the refs should of taken a mini time out to relook up the rules on fouling.  Both teams started out slow, letting defense set the tone of the game with the first quarter ending at 16-12 (rather low scoring for such a high stakes game), but then again, defense is what wins is it not?  The second quarter we charged at them, winning it 8-18 putting us up by 6 (24-30) going into half time.  Our momentum carried us into the third, and we won that quarter 12-17, extending our lead to 11.  But, with the thought of not being able to cut down their own nets, pop the bottles of champagne they had waiting in their lockerroom, and of letting down their numerous flower fans in the stands, Göttingen clawed their way back into the game sinking their only 3 three pointers of the game in the 4th quarter.  Our offensive spark had somehow completely run out, and we scored a meager 3 points the ENTIRE quarter up until the last 3.7 seconds of the game... when our center, who hadn't scored a bucket all game, sank a fade-away shot off the extended block to put us up by 1 point as time expired.

What goes through your mind in that moment?
The second the ball is in the air and headed toward the basket, you stop breathing...
...you might as well be sitting on the sidelines as a fan because you don't move anything but your head and eyes as they follow the ball...
....it hits the backboard and for a split second you think I need to try and rebound this if it bounces the wrong way...
...but you're paralyzed in whatever position you were in because you know this is the last chance...
...then it bounces once or twice, it's hard to say, around the rim...
...then through the net and a second of shock is quickly erased by pure abandon and triumph as the gym falls utterly silent and you sprint down the court with your arms gloriously thrown in the air as the final buzzer rings.

The Last Test

We were alive.  And we are still alive!  Saturday is our final test against our arch nemesis (title earned over time).  No one remembers second place, and second place gets stuck in the second league, so there is a lot on the line and the stakes as high as ever.  If it so happens that you've made it this far in reading this long blog post, you may be interested in watching the live stats (there unfortunately won't be a live stream) for the game at 9am West Coast time (8am Alaska time) at www.dbbl.de.  As they say in Germany, "Drucken die Daumen!" or push your thumbs up! :)