Bahamas Blog Day Two
8/12/2011 6:57:00 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 12, 2011 (Day Two)
After an early morning, followed by seven hours of travel on Thursday, it was
nice for everyone to get a good night's rest, as breakfast wasn't until 10 am. The team assembled downstairs for a breakfast
buffet.
At 12:45 pm, we somehow fit 29 men (many of them taller than the average person) into a shuttle bus that took us to Kendal Isaacs National Gymnasium for the first time. It's a gym that holds an estimated 2,500 people, with the seats in a variety of bright colors, probably to make up for some horrific lighting inside the facility. It's comparable to a high-school sized gym, and surprisingly it was air-conditioned and not at all hot inside. There were still some papers lying around from the night before, including a box score from when Louisville beat Commonwealth Giants, 115-54, last night. Ron Smith, one of our tour guides on the trip, attended the game the night before and said Louisville's got a very talented squad, and the Giants didn't have their best game either.
Practice was pretty low-key, with mostly shooting exercises and some 5-on-0 offensive drills. The team had Wednesday off and travelled all day yesterday, so everyone was eager to return to the floor. Most eager was Ethan Wragge, who had a scare with his knee on Monday at practice and hadn't had a chance to test it out since then. He should be OK, and might even play tonight.
After about 50 minutes of practice, coach Greg McDermott gathered the team together and explained all the international rules one last time. Four quarters of 10 minutes. Five fouls for disqualification. Eight seconds to pass half-court, and a 24-second shot clock. One other big change is that timeouts cannot be called during live play. Instead, timeouts must be called by the head coach, who reports those to the scorer's table, and they are then granted at the next dead ball. There's some support in the US to adopt this international timeout rule, so it'll be interesting to see how the guys adapt to it. It would appear as though the court isn't as long from baseline-to-baseline, and there are four stripes for various three-point lines. I think we're playing the gold, “international” line.
We also had an interesting visitor at the practice, a rat. It was located about seven rows up on the aisle, right behind the visiting bench. Every now and then it would flinch or move a small bit, which then caused the rest of the team to recoil and head the other direction.
Also interesting is that there is a large stadium across the street from Isaacs National Gymnasium. It was built for soccer and track, by a firm from China. Tracks, especially some of the sprinting events, are very popular in the Bahamas. I don't know much more than that about the facility, but at a glance I'd guess it holds at least 25,000 people, a huge amount for an island with just 221,000 people overall.
We then returned the hotel and had a few hours to relax. Most of the guys spent time on the beach, tanning or walking around the hotel. Another group, including Matthew Dorwart, Derek Sebastian, Brian Kooienga, Rob Anderson, Curtis Self and Nathan Wieseler went snorkeling. We were with our boat captain “Paul”, for the better part of an hour. He took us a few miles out on the ocean, gave us some instructions, and gave us about 30-45 minutes to snorkel. It was an exciting experience for everyone involved, as we were surrounded by all sorts of bright and colorful fish, There were even some clear, quarter-sized globs floating in the water. A few guys learned (too late, apparently), that they were jellyfish. Most people think of jellyfish as these large clear objects that glide in the ocean...these were considerably smaller and very prevalent where the ocean floor was the deepest.
With another meal scheduled for 5:15 pm, that group headed in to shore around 5 pm. Upon returning to land, both Kooienga and Wieseler were awarded large sea shells by Captain Paul after taking turns as “First Mate” for this voyage. Right as we finished up, a downpour of rain took place from out of nowhere, which was random.
Momentarily, we'll be heading back to Isaacs National Gymnasium. Our game doesn't begin until 9 pm local time, but Louisville is playing and we will get to see part of their game. To find out more about Creighton's game vs. the Bahama All-Stars, check back on GoCreighton.com later tonight. Tomorrow we play Commonwealth Giants at 4 pm local time (3 pm Central), with Louisville after us.
Don't forget, we'll have updates on our games via our Twitter site at http://www.twitter.com/gocreighton.
Once we get back to hotel late tonight, we'll have a video posted above this article including a few game highlights. Also, don't forget to check out day one or day two of our photo gallery from this trip.
Until tomorrow...Go Jays!
