Daily Archives: August 20, 2010

Case in Brazil: Facing the pros

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The Case Western Reserve men’s basketball team is in Brazil, and blogging about the experience as well. Evan Tsudis writes:

I’m writing this blog after one of the hardest and more physical games of my career but I’ll pull a Pulp Fiction and keep you hanging. Last night we enjoyed our last night in Paraty. For a small colonial town it showed a lot of life at night. We enjoyed live music and attempted to converse in Portuguese with the locals. They even let Reid step up to the guitar and give Brazil a taste of his original music. After a nice rest we boarded the bus on the way to our game. Most watched movies or tried to contort their large bodies into small seats to sleep.

We arrived at our game around 6:00 local time. There were fans waiting for us to get off the bus and trying to get autographs. The gym was the nicest we have seen in Brazil and had a lot of life to it. Music was constantly playing and the stands were near capacity. After the playing of the national anthems and handshakes it was time to begin.

Basketball in Brazil and the United States is a bit different. The court and paint have different dimensions and the rules are interpreted differently. Physical play is encouraged and things like palming the ball and lane violations are at the discretion of the referee. The team we were against was a professional team and was extremely physically gifted. The combination of our rust and the other teams athleticism led to a 107 to 57 victory for our opponents. After the game we took pictures and signed autographs for the fans. Every place we’ve played we’ve been treated like rock stars and followed until we drive away.

This whole trip has been an amazing experience. It has been a great time to see new things and spend time with my teammates. Some of my favorite activities were our adventure at sea on the Sir Francis Drake yesterday and taking a picture with my Terrible Towel at Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. I’d also like to point out that my beach soccer team of Rob, Summers, Reid, Brian Curth, Bokan and myself are coming back to Cleveland 2-0 and looking for challengers. One shout out to my father, Peter Tsudis, who celebrated his birthday on Aug. 14.

Go Steelers!

Augie in China: Home again

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Augustana senior Kyle Nelson and his teammates took a summer trip to China. He blogged regularly on D3hoops.com about the team’s journey.

Augustana players and coaches in Japan

Whoa, what a trip! From Aug. 3-18, our Augie basketball team has traveled over 17,200 miles, visited eight cities, taken seven flights, rode one train, played five games, went through three of the world’s five largest airports (Chicago O’Hare, Beijing Capitol Airport and Tokyo Narita Airport), and toured many sites across East Asia. It was the kind of trip that I will remember for the rest of my life, and I’m certain that everyone else feels the same. From bartering in the markets of Hong Kong to climbing the Great Wall, we experienced so many things and saw plenty of differences between our home in America and East Asia that made us both miss home as well as view Asia in a completely new light.

From a basketball standpoint, this trip showed us how much Chinese people really embrace basketball. We know that basketball is still a growing sport in East Asia, but every person we came across was excited to see that we were a basketball team from the United States. Also, the fans at every game were incredibly great to us and cheered for our play just as much as they did for the home team. We were treated as special guests and the people made us feel very welcome because they saw how happy we were to be in their country.

At this point of the trip (roughly over South Dakota traveling at 696mph) we are all ready to get home. It has been a great trip and we have all learned a lot about ourselves both athletically and culturally, but we are anxiously awaiting seeing family and friends again before school starts on Monday.

I’d like to thanks everyone who read this blog for the duration of the trip, or even just once. I really enjoyed writing them and I hope you enjoyed reading them just as much. Thanks to everyone who made this trip possible and I hope to see everyone at the Carver Center during the season!

– Kyle Nelson