Bahamas Blog Day One
8/11/2011 11:57:00 PM | Men's Basketball
The Creighton men's basketball team departed for the Bahamas on the morning of Aug. 11, where they will play four games before returning on Aug. 17. While away from Omaha, sports information director Rob Anderson, video coordinator Nathan Wieseler and graduate manager Brian Kooienga plan to keep those who couldn't make the trip informed on the various activities with a daily diary, video and photos.
August 11
After an early wake-up call, we met at 6 am to depart for Eppley Airfield to catch an 8:10 am flight to the Bahamas, with an hour layover in Dallas along the way. As anyone who has taken a family vacation knows, trips always require a great deal of planning is involved. This one has been in the works for almost a year. Add in the fact that international travel is involved, and the logistics of securing passports (which can take 4-6 weeks) for everyone can be a process in itself.
As you can imagine, anticipation for the program's first foreign trip since 2007 is high. Everyone arrives well before the scheduled departure time, with no one wanting to risk missing this once in a lifetime kind of adventure.
We arrived in Nassau about 3:40 pm, where all the airport passengers are greeted by a band playing Reggae music before going through customs. After getting everyone's luggage crammed into one large van, there were three other vans that shuttled us to the hotel (Breezes), about a 15 minute ride away.
Oddly, the steering wheels for two of the vans were on the right side, but in the other van it was on the left side. In the Bahamas, cars drive on the left side of the road (like England), something that worried more than a few passengers when oncoming cars were driving past us on the right.
Our shuttle driver informed us that Nassau is on the island of New Providence, which is home to 221,000 of the country's total population of 353,000.
Breezes is an all-inclusive hotel right on the ocean. But because the ocean isn't enough water, it also has a few different pools and a hot tub on the premises. The hotel has a basketball court, ping pong tables a climbing wall and some area that appears to be a trapeze net/cage set-up, which people say will get busy in future days. Meanwhile, the beach has plenty of chairs to lay out in, a volleyball court, and shallow water. Some of the guys decided to work on their sand castle designing skills, while others were more focused on throwing a football around.
Tonight, we went to eat in our hotel at a place called Garden of Eden. Plenty of appetizers, and great meals, with a few people getting dessert too. For whatever reason the table with coach Merfeld and coach Lutz took a little longer for their order to be delivered, but no one seemed to mind too much since the weather was still 85 degrees. I will say, it's a tad ironic that a place called Breezes has no winds, and the humidity is off the charts, and not in a good way.
Tomorrow we'll play our first game at 9 pm local time (8 pm Central) against the Bahamas All-Stars (not Commonwealth Giants are originally reported). Hopefully we can get off to a better start than a few other MVC teams on foreign trips, as both Illinois State (in Canada) and Wichita State (in Brazil) have lost the first two games of their respective trips.
We'll do our best to provide updates, but we've been told there isn't Internet access at the arena (and definitely no TV/radio/live stats for our games). Best case scenario is we'll find a way to update either the Creighton Athletics Twitter site (http://www.twitter.com/gocreighton) or coach Greg McDermott's Twitter feed(http://www.twitter.com/cucoachmac), so be sure to follow us on there just in case. And as mentioned on the GoCreighton Twitter site the other day, international rules such as a 24-second shot clock and 8 seconds to pass half-court will be in effect, which will be an adjustment and should lead to some higher scoring games. Worst case scenario is we play the game, go eat, and then find a spot with internet access so an update is waiting for you when you wake up in the morning.
Also, be sure to check out our photo album link at the top of the page for even more pictures.
As they say in the Bahamas, good night (they speak English here too).
Day One Quote of the Day: "This water...it tastes salty." (Name withheld by a player upon entering the Atlantic Ocean)
