The Turnaround

Well thats a 180 if I've ever seen one...

Oh wait...sorry that was supposed to be at the end of the blog....my bad....lets try this again...

When we last left off we had just suffered a four game skid to some of the higher and lower seeds in our league.  As with any losing streak everything seems to feel worse than it really is.  We have a great team with great players but for some reason we couldn't put the pieces back together.  With our next game rapidly approaching we needed to do some serious regrouping and get ourselves back in order.

Especially our defense.

And for those several days of practice that was our focus.  Getting stops, creating turnovers, and getting rebounds.  We worked and worked as the unit we were trying to be.

Eventually the practices end and it is game time.  We take our home floor against Orebro who is last in the conference.  If there was ever a game we needed to win it was this one.  

The game starts in no special way and for all intents and purposes seems like it would be a regular game for me.

On defense I rotate to help one of my teammates and BAM!!!

I am smacked in the nose and looking at the offensive player who looks away guiltily...

My first instinct is to walk over there and have a "friendly chat" with him.

However a ref comes up to me and says I have to leave the game...

"You are dripping blood on the court, you have to sub out."

Game over.

It was at that moment when I walked off the court staring at the offender the whole way I decided that I was gonna do everything I could to put my mark on this game.  They would remember playing against Solna that night.

We pulled it together.  Defensive stops were coming left and right.  Missed shot, my rebound.  Missed shot, my rebound.  Missed shot, my rebound.

I wasn't gonna wait for anybody else to get that ball.

On the defensive glass I boxed out, on the offensive end I made them miss, I made sure that there coach chewed them out for every offensive rebound I got.  

Our teams defense was stifling.  By the end of the game we held them to 51 points and I set a new team record for rebounds in a game with 22 to go along my 17 points.

Our captain huddled us up after the game, pointed to the scoreboard and said, "I want everyone to look up at that scoreboard and realize what we are capable of.   

We all knew it.

Our next game was against the team we are chasing.  Upsalla has a very solid team anchored by a 7'1 Center.

Can I just divert and say that I really dislike it when I am around someone taller than me.  Its nothing against them personally but there are very few people I like looking at the top of my head (D-weez your the exception).  Not that there is anything wrong with it.  Plus I dont like looking up at someone and seeing the inside of their nostrils...just not a good look....wait what am I even talking about?? Man I got more sidetracked than a teenage boy walking past victoria secret.  Oh yeah the game...lets move on...

Not only was this an important game for us personally but it was also going to be shown on national TV.  Not that that made a huge difference.  But I may or may not have treated my afro with the attention and delicacy that is shown to the contestants in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.  

It needed to happen.

The game was a back and forth nitty gritty grinding of a game and it wasnt until the beginning of the 3rd quarter that we opened the game up with a BANG....

Literally.

Yours truly started it off with a nice one handed dunk off of an out of bounds play.  Typical game actions.   What happened next was far from the norm...

William Walker decided he wanted to let EVERYONE IN THE NATION OF SWEDEN KNOW HE WAS THERE!!!!

just watch the video...

Yes indeed that is me actin a fool after his dunk...

As if that wasnt crazy enough the play after Logi gets a steal, fastbreak and a dunk of his own!!!!

Now everyone was jumpin around gettin excited and as we put the team away it was clear that that momentum shift was key to our victory.  

I'm hatin...

Man everyone wants to get a dunk when we are on TV...ALLLLL IN THE VIDEOS....takin all my shine!!!! (for those who think this is cause to start a discussion that there is dissention between my teammates and I I assure this is just a joke...you can see from the video that Im more hyped then they are....but again I digress.)

So after two games we are 2-0 and I finished that game with my third consecutive double double of 10 pts and 10 rebs.  

Well thats a 180 if I've ever seen one...

We have about a week break in between games so it will be nice to relax and regroup, but our next game is against the top team in the league in their place.

Time to kick it up a notch....