Hoping for better times ahead
Hi again, Euroleague fans, this time from a bus caravan on our way from Wroclaw to Lodz, getting a look at the Polish countryside. This is the caravan you want to be in, because all three teams in these buses - Lithuania, Poland and Turkey - are heading to the next round. And it was NOT easy to get there, as anyone following our team knows. But we survived to play three more games, and hopefully we can turn things around. We need to play better if we want to keep going, and for us, there is no margin for more error after we lost to the teams in the other two buses in this caravan, Poland and Turkey.
It's been a tough first round, no doubt about it. We started against Turkey, which we knew was a good team. We were preparing for them, but we started rough and the game didn't go our way from the very beginning. Then, when we had a chance at the end, we couldn't pull it off. We were down 6 or 7 points, which in basketball is not a lot if you get some defensive stops, but we didn't. Our defense just didn't convert points. Turkey played better than us and they deserved it, but it was tough to lose our first game like that.
Then we had to turn around and play Poland, which playing well and doing so at home, with a huge crowd and great support. They came out strong, and just like in the first game against Turkey, went up on us 10 points in the first few minutes. Trying to recoup points got harder as the game went on. It ended up another tight game, and again in this one against Poland, we couldn't pull it out. They played well, but it surprises me a bit that we didn't, because it seems that we play better against the bigger teams than against the ones we don't know that much.
Anyway, now we're excited for the second round. I hope we turned a corner by beating Bulgaria in our last game, which we had to win. We worked hard for two months and I think maybe we were trying too hard in our first games and even in the first half against Bulgaria. We know what to do, for sure, so maybe we were just thinking too much. The second half against Bulgaria, a couple of things fell our way and suddenly, everything worked. We started getting points off our defense, relaxing on offense and it felt good. We feel prepared for whatever comes.
Of course, it's not just us having problems. You saw Spain almost have the same problems as us. It shows, as I mentioned before, that all these teams are good and prepared to play hard and compete. That's the beauty of a tournament, though. If we played the same teams two or three times, usually the favorite would come out with two wins. In a tournament, you never know who is strongest on that one day. What we've seen so far proves that this tournament is tough and all the teams are ready to fight.
As for the next round, we've got three teams with S on their chests: Serbia, Slovenia and Spain. I hope they don't think they are Superman. We played all three of these teams in friendlies, so that'll probably help us to know what to expect and what style to be ready for. But of course they are going to be tough games, for us and for them. And they are likely to be close games. We have two days to prepare for the first one, Slovenia, and that's all we can think about right now.
Today we'll get to Lodz and maybe practice, maybe lift some weights in the hotel. We'll prepare for Slovenia tomorrow, go through their plays and prepare their defense. We need most of all to pick up our defense. In the friendlies, we played well defensively and held teams under 75 points. Now, we're struggling to slow teams down. We fixed some of our turnover problems, but the defense is not as it should be...yet.
For sure we have dug a hole for ourselves and have not picked the easiest route to the quarterfinals. But we know we can play against these new teams, so anything can happen. We have a tough road to advance, but we're ready. Maybe our best games are ahead of us, when we need them most.
POSTED BY
Marius Petravicius, Poland
DATE:
Thursday, September 10, 2009