Well, I can tell you one thing: it's good to be back in Vitoria, Spain. What a tough road trip! We left last Monday morning, and as you know we lost by two big scores to CSKA Moscow, missed our flight back from Russia, stayed a night in Madrid and then played a Spanish League game on Sunday before flying back and getting here to our own homes again. You know the bad news: two big losses in Moscow that dropped us down 0-2 in our five-game series against CSKA. The good news is that we won our Spanish League game. The truth is that after two bad games, getting beat by 20, when I think we're better than that, we needed to get our confidence back. Having a game before the next one helped in that regard. It was something we needed, I think. And a road win in the Spanish League, no matter where it is, can help you get your game in order. We did the things that got us here, and it turned out to be good for our confidence going into Tuesday.

Of course, I don't want to talk much about what happened in Moscow. Some things are better forgotten. The first game was over early. It was just a bad game by us in which didn't play as well as we could have and should have. In the second game, I thought we played alright in the first half, and were down by just a few at halftime, something that isn't necessarily bad or unexpected playing on the road against CSKA. But then we had a third-quarter letdown, right after coming out of the locker room, and CSKA capitalized on it. To say we had a letdown is not taking anything from CSKA. They're a great team, and because of that, you just can't go three possessions in a row without getting a decent shot, you can't slack off for a couple minutes. It's 40 minutes or nothing...

Hi, Euroleague fans. As someone who worked their way up a long ladder to be here, I am very excited to be going into the Euroleague playoffs with Caja Laboral. I came over to Europe from a small university and moved year by year from the third division in Spain, to the second, then the first. Now, to be with a team going into the Euroleague playoffs, with the whole continent paying attention, and beyond, is very exciting. It's a great opportunity for any player. Not many chances like this come up. And I think any player would agree with me that we all want to prove ourselves on this stage.

I can say another thing that everyone will agree on: what a way to arrive! Our game to qualify to the playoffs, well, I've never been a part of something like that. It was a once-in-a-lifetime comeback, being down 12 with a couple minutes left against Cibona. Some of us on the bench were thinking: Is this it? Then, all of a sudden, we got some turnovers, some three-pointers, and we were down by just 4 points with a minute left. Everyone was into the game, we got to overtime as we hoped and we somehow pulled off the qualification. The mood among us afterwards was disbelief. How did we do that? It was amazing, that's for sure. But we're now among the top eight teams in Europe, it's a new stage, and we are ready to go again.

Of course, our opponents from CSKA has a lot of guys who have been together awhile. They were here in Vitoria earlier...