Projo College Hoops

Here is the latest update from PC's Italian trip, courtesy assistant coach Kevin Kurbec.
The Friars are 1-2 on their trip and face some of the best teams in Italy (League A) in the final 3 dates.

KEVIN KURBEC
Our journey has taken us to Florence for the last two days. Although it is not quite as large and does not have quite as many tourist attractions as Rome, the consensus among our group is that Florence is a nicer place to visit with quite a distinct culture and personality. We are fortunate in that our hotel is right in the middle of everything, just 2 blocks away from the main shopping district of the city and a 10-minute walk from the Ponte Vecchio. Our players have experienced the open air market that is just down the street from our hotel, an area that rivals Canal Street in NYC, and have enjoyed the opportunity to barter with many of the vendors for souvenirs or other items that they may be looking to purchase.

Today (Tuesday) was our 3rd of 6 games on the tour, and we suffered a very frustrating 5-point loss to Caramatic Pistoia. The final score was 72-67, but what made the game even more frustrating was that we led by 13 points, 60-47 after 3 quarters before Pistoia ended up going on a 16-0 run over the first 6 minutes of the 4th quarter. The first half was a back and forth with neither team opening up a lead larger than 5 points. We trailed by 1 point at halftime, 36-35. The 3rd quarter was arguably our best quarter of the trip so far, as we outscored Pistoia 25-11 and executed perfectly on both ends of the floor. Our half court defense was especially noteworthy, as we limited Pistoia to only 3 buckets on 15 half-court possessions in the quarter. As is normally the case, good defense led to good offense, and we ended up pouring in 25 points during the 10-minute period.
Jon Kale was once again a monster, scoring 17 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. He did a tremendous job getting open in scoring positions around the basket and he also grabbed 4 offensive rebounds. Sharaud Curry once again played well with 16 points and 7 assists, and Dwain Williams dropped in 15 points. Though he did not light it up in the scoring column, Charles Burch played his best game of the trip by far and did a lot of the little things that helps to make him an important part of our team, especially in keying our defensive effort in the 3rd quarter. On a side note for anyone looking at the box score, Jeff Xavier sprained his knee in the early part of our last game vs. Caserta, and he did not play the last 3 quarters of that game or any of our game tonight. He is questionable for tomorrow’s game at this point.

If the 3rd quarter was our best of the trip, the 4th quarter was arguably our worst. We got outscored 16-0 over the first 6 minutes of the quarter, and by the time Jon Kale finally made 1 of 2 free throws with less than 4 minutes to go we were down by 2. We were never able to regain the lead and eventually ended up falling 72-67. Looking at the box score, the two stats that jump out were our free throw shooting, which was a sub-par 10 for 21, and our turnovers – 24 in total. Our turnovers were committed in a number of different ways, but one thing that we are struggling to get a grasp on is the way that they interpret traveling here in Europe. 6-8 of those turnovers were travels, and many of them would not have been called here in the States. It is very frustrating for our guys to get called for traveling when they simply throw a shot fake, yet some of the moves that our opponents are making are 3-4 steps and not called violations. It is simply a different interpretation than we are used to and it would be silly to change the way that our guys play the game just for this week.

We continue to enjoy the off the court activities as well. One of the most interesting aspects of Italy to us has to be the service areas off of the Autostrade known as the Auto Grille. These areas never cease to amaze, and for anyone that has never seen this place words cannot do it justice. Chaos is the word that best describes the set-up. They have different food areas inside the building like a deli and a bakery, but they do not utilize the concept of lines. Therefore, it is simply a mad free-for-all with people pushing their way towards the counter and shouting out orders towards shell shocked employees. Again, words cannot do it justice but it is truly an experience and has been a running joke throughout the trip.

Tomorrow morning we wake-up and bus to Porto San Giorio, a small bus town on the Adriatic coast. We play games both tomorrow and Thursday nights, then our final game is on Saturday. We will check in again in a couple of days.

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