MBB: Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[coach_dains]

You can watch tonight's second half at www.soraweb.it

[coach_dains]

Sorry for the delay in getting this out. Due to our travel schedule, lack of Wi-Fi, and trying to catch up on sleep, this is the first opportunity to get this in.

Thursday,  June 4,  2015

Today we visited the Vatican city Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Due to the long lines, even at 8 AM, we all decided to spend nine extra euros through a travel Agency to get to the front of the line and enter the museum as it opened. Probably the best money we spent all trip thus far.

I don't think it would be fair for me to discuss every emotion that everyone of these players felt. But I do feel confident that they were surprisingly overwhelmed with the vastness and detail of everything they saw in the Vatican city Museum.   It was really great to see everyone hanging out together and discussing what they saw. Having them walk into The Sistine Chapel together, was quite interesting, as they were all looking up and trying to sneak a picture here and there without getting caught by security.  I am pretty confident that they all got great pictures.  They will truly cherish this experience.

From there, they all ventured over to Piazza San Pietro.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get into the Basilica di San Pietro due to the long lines and the short time we needed to get back to the hotel in preparation for the game later that night. But many pictures were taken  and many experiences were created.

By 5 PM, we had to be on the bus as we had a two hour ride to Sora.  There the SCIAC all-stars tipped off against the C-league, ASD Pallacanestro SORA.  As you can imagine, they had a very slow start. Walking all day, a two hour bus ride, a game the night before, and very little sleep lead to very heavy legs.  Despite sloppy play after one half, SCIAC  was ahead 41 to 32. Once the SCIAC got momentum, and a good feel for the pace of the game they dominated the second half and won 97-71.  The two Kingsmen, Arik Smith and Coltrane Powdrill led the way with 27 and 16 points. Colin Zaversnick  had a great second-half scoring 11 of his 13 points and Niall Harrison also scored in double figures with 10 points and 10 rebounds. Michael Cohen pumped in seven points, and Nick Demusis, despite dealing with a hamstring injury scored six points, five rebounds, three steals and four assists.

Tomorrow, we wake up early and travel 5 hours to Florence with a stop in Siena, and have our third game in three nights.

[coach_dains]

 Friday, June 5, 2015

After having breakfast at 8 AM, we packed up and got on the bus to travel to Montecatini. The total drive time to here was about five hours.  About halfway through we stopped off in a little town in Tuscany called Siena. What an absolutely gorgeous place. Little did we know it is one of the most  sought after tourist attractions in Italy.

If you didn't know what you were getting yourself into, like most of us did not, you would think we just walked into a small little Italian village. After walking around through the alley ways, you come upon some beautiful historic sites.  The first being the center of Siena, the Piazza Del Campo. Every year they have a horse race with the spectators in the middle of the track and looking from the windows in the buildings around the track.  From there, you walked out the spectacular stairway, through an archway system and come up on one of the most spectacular cathedrals in all of Italy, the Siena Cathedral or Duomo. The spectacular facade was finished in 1380 and at the time was the largest Cathedral in the world. But due to lack of funds, war and disease they only completed about half. Spectacular nonetheless! After seeing the sights we are able to walk around and have lunch. Most of the group went to a local Ristorante overlooking the rest of the city where we enjoyed a nice plate of pasta served with local wild boar, evidently killed that morning. DELIZIOSO!!! And of course we finished off the meal with gelato.

Afterwards, we had about an hour to ourselves before getting on the bus heading to our hotel in Montetecatini.  We did have a game that night at 8:30 PM. But the next two hours on the bus were great. It was really great to hear all the players interacting about their experiences at their respected schools. Talking about they game planned for each other and rehashing all the special instances that happened during their seasons. Come to find out, it didn't matter what school they went to they had the same funny stories about their coaches, teammates, and each other. It was a great thing to overhear!!!

Now to the game:
If there was a reporter writing about the game, it would've been titled, "SCIAC ALL STARS 'TRAVEL' to loss against Cestistica Pescia!!  They had an unfortunate loss at the buzzer on an offensive rebound. The final was 67-65. But the story of the game was the 26 turnovers, easily half were due to traveling calls. You would think when playing international basketball, traveling would not be an issue. But evidently they stress the call when in fast break situations.  We knew about the rule, but didn't have enough time to really prepare to play that particular rule in the system. We learned That the ball needs to be balanced immediately upon a catch. We had steel after steel and fast-break after fast-break negated due to us not putting the ball down quick enoughThat the ball needs to be balanced immediately upon a catch. We had steal after steal and fast-break after fast-break negated due to us not putting the ball  down quick enough.  At one point, Colin Zaversnick had 4 steals that were immediately called travels  despite not having anyone in front of him for an easy layup. he even had to three-point shots wiped off due to " travels." The SCIAC All-Stars could never get into a rhythm.

They however did take a lead late in the fourth quarter. Arik Smith hit back-to-back three pointers only to have  Cestistica Percia match him with a three pointer and three-point play of their own to keep the game tied. Taylor Hamasaki, had a chance to take the lead with 20 seconds remaining, however his miss lead to a fast break, quick shot, and offensive rebound for the score at the buzzer.

Cestistica was led  by their 6'9" center who pumped in 30 points and 12 rebounds. Most of his damage coming through the first three quarters. Niall Harrison and Andrew Hogue played great physical defense and held him in check most of the fourth quarter. Andrew was even described as "Julius peppers" due to his physical nature on the glass and on defense.  Arik Smith was the only player in double figures with 17 points. Zaversnick,  despite having several points, approximately 10, taken away finished second in scoring with nine. Andrew Bucholtz,  had a great all-around game with seven points, 10 rebounds, to assists and two steals.

The All-Stars, will need a little break after three games in three nights. We will spend all day tomorrow in Florence, sightseeing and relaxing.The All-Stars, will need a little break after three games in three nights. We will spend all day tomorrow in Florence, sightseeing and relaxing.

[coach_dains]

After our "travel" game we had a "free" day in Firenze (Florence) on Saturday and most of the day on Sunday to explore Montecatini (where our hotel was located) and/or travel to Pisa by train. The city of Montecatini was beautiful!!

But let's keep it on basketball......

Sunday, June 7, 2015

The SCIAC All-stars took on CUS Pisa, a mixture of players from 4 teams in the Italian 3rd division. The makeup of players for CUS came from Pisa and Livorno primarily. From the start we knew this would be the most legitimate/competitive game we would play all week. Even the officials looked official - they matched from jersey to their shoes!!!

CUS had size at every position and were very skilled in all facets of the game. Their size downplayed any lack of athleticism they had against us. The first half was a back and forth affair, as both teams struggled to get anything going consistently. The competitive nature of both teams was very high, however.

SCIAC came out very physical, pounding the ball down low to John Joyce and Niall Harrison and getting very positive results. Coltrane Powdrill and Andrew Hogue were constantly attacking the basket, with Powdrill drawing many fouls and getting to the FT line.  The guards, however, were having a difficult time finding their stride on the offensive end, but they played fantastic on the defensive end.

The second half was a different story as the guards dominated the play, particularly Colin Zaversnick. Once he started hitting his long range shots, a huge sigh of relief came over the team, and the rim got bigger for everyone. Zaversnick, Taylor Hamasaki, Arik Smith, and Powdrill all showed why they averaged over 18 ppg this season. Hamasaki was cutting up the defense with ball handling, Zaversnick hit 3 threes, Smith hit 2 more 3-balls (including 2 dunks) and Powdrill was drilling his patented pull up jumpers.

Hampered by a hamstring injury all week, Nick Demusis showed flashes of his old self with some nice drives and finishes at the rim. Michael Cohen was running the PG and had some beautiful drives to the basket. And Andrew Bucholtz ran his complete all-around floor game with defense, rebounds and assists.

Stat Leaders:
Joyce - 13 pts, 4 rebounds and two steals
Zaversnick - 22 pts, four rebounds, four assists, four steals
Powdrill - 8 pts, seven rebounds and two assists
Smith - 10 pts
Andrew Bucholtz - 11 Rebs.

It has been a fantastic trip. Now we look forward to a four hour bus ride to Milan, as we have to catch a 10 am flight!!

[madzillagd]

Loving the write ups.  I'm reliving the past with the various destinations you're describing and had a similar experience of surprise hanging in Siena.  Being young at the time, the wife & I hadn't done much research on Siena when we traveled there years ago.  We spent the day in the square learning about the race which had just occurred a few weeks previous to our visit.  Later that night we were dining at one of the restaurants at the square and unbeknownst to us we found ourselves in the middle of a restaurant full of people from one district that participated had in the race.  At some point in the evening another district, which was having their post-race party at another restaurant in the square, stood up 100-200 people strong came over and surrounded our restaurant.  In a surreal Italian version of West Side Story they began singing their district songs and taunted each other in a good-natured way.  After several minutes of this they returned to their own restaurant; the folks from our restaurant then returned the favor.  Many years and many trips later it still remains one of my favorite memories of travel. 

[coach_dains]

Just as a final note to wrap it all up here is a quote from Whittier assistant coach, Mark Jensen, who was the dierector and head coach for this excision:

"I had hoped that this trip to Italy would give our 10 seniors a couple of things: 1) to allow them to experience the beauty of another culture and 2) to perhaps gain some international attention on the basketball court. I feel the trip did that & more. The cultural experience of Italy will be etched on the minds & hearts of these guys forever. The competition on the court was good and the connections made with foreign clubs could potentially lead to a few of our players getting a chance to play overseas. One of the most fulfilling aspects of the trip for me was to see how 10 young men from rival schools who barely knew each other and in some cases likely felt animosity towards each other through years of fierce competition, were able to come together with a few weeks of practice and a week in Italy and come out the other side as friends. There were real bonds made by all of the players as they played with and for each other representing our conference with pride, and spent time traveling, joking and just having a good time with one another - that was special to see. I'd like to thank Coach Geoff Dains (Cal Lu) and Coach Ryan Conboy (Whittier) for all their help and support in making this first senior all-star trip a success, and hope that this is just the first of many more to come."

I hope to have some pictures up once I am fully acclimated to American time.

[coach_dains]

Here is the local write-up on our 2nd game in SORA:
http://www.soraweb.it/basket-la-expert-lucarelli-in-amichevole-con-la-squadra-di-un-college-americano/

[coach_dains]

Here is a quick download of all my pictures from Italy......
https://flic.kr/s/aHskdP4F7y

I am collecting more from all the other individuals.

Enjoy!

[coach_dains]

Here is the link to our second game against SORA.....
http://www.soraweb.it/nb-sora-2000-vs-sciac-all-academic-la-diretta/

Broken down into quarters......

[Gray Fox]

An Oxy player is featured here at number 9.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/11-student-athletes-on-what-they-learned-from-playing-college-sports_55cce90ae4b0cacb8d334e0f

[WoostAr]

Neat Grantland article.

http://grantland.com/features/nba-gregg-popovich-san-antonio-spurs-history-coach-division-three-pomona-pitzer-college-sagehens/

[Gray Fox]

Great story.

[Hoya86]

Nice professional debut last week by CMS alum Tyler Gaffaney for Spain LEB Silver league team El Olivar Zaragoza.  17 p 7 boards in 36 min at PG.

[WoostAr]

Scoped out Caltech's scrimmage against MAsters College.  It was an actual game for Masters -- Caltech played everyone obviously checking out rotations. 

Only noteworthy item was the play of Nasser Al Reyes: 19 pts, 7 reb, 3 ast, 3 blocks, 1 steal -- opened the game three pointer, baseline dunk, dunk off a bounce pass.  He got a little excited after that and took some silly shots, but he obviously put in a lot of work this off-season.

For a first scrimmage I was impressed by Caltech -- definitely some things to clean up, but there were a lot of good things happening -- ready for the regular season already!!

[sac]

Notcied today Claremont MS is playing all of its home games across the street at Pomona-Pitzer while their athletic facilities are being renovated.