What's up everyone? I hope you had a real good week... After our solid win against Ashkelon last weekend, we have our biggest test of the season, followed by a pretty wild week. Tomorrow (Sunday) we play Maccabi Tel Aviv in their home arena, the Nokia Center. If you know anything about European basketball you know Maccabi Tel Aviv is often one of the best teams in all of Europe, and usually dominates the competition in their home country, Israel. Well this year, they have already taken two losses in the Israeli League (to Jerusalem and Bnei Hasharon), and they have been proven to be beatable. We head into the game after a long week of practices in an ice box of a gym, but when warm-ups get going, I am pretty sure everyone on our team will be ready to go. Maccabi Tel Aviv's top players are Carlos Arroyo who spent a number of years with the Pistons, Magic, and Jazz in the NBA, as well as Marcus Fizer who was a top 5 draft pick of the Chicago Bulls almost ten years ago. They have two real good young Israeli players also named Lior Eliyahu and Omri Casspi, both young slashing type forwards who have high ceilings. Hopefully we can catch them on an off night, which could prove to be all we need to sneak a victory against them.
As for other things going on in Israel, the war in the south is still in full force, and it is somewhere in the ballpark of day 20. On Thursday I believe, there were also some rockets shot from the north in Lebanon, and landed in a town in the very northeast portion of Israel. Haifa, where I am, is located in the northwest, and the closest anything has come to us was when a few rockets landed in Nahariya which is about 45 minutes straight north from us.
That's all I got for right now, but I will update pretty quickly after the Tel Aviv game.
Big ups to my alma mater, Saint Mary's College (CA)... they are currently 16-1, and chillin' in the top 25.
