Usually the last game on a tournament weekend means final time baby where the big time players write history and tragic hero´s can be born as well. However at the Gezeiten Haus Cup in Rhondorf that had seen Northeastern(NCAA) and the Iranian national team and Dirk Bauermann withdraw, the 2016 Basketball Aid international tour had to scramble and find replacements and did with Pro B team Bochum that played on Saturday while the Hebeisen White Wings Hanau fought against  top BBL team ratiopharm Ulm in the second game on Sunday that may have been meaningless in the final title game atmosphere and was just another routine test game, but for some players, this game had other meanings when bringing teammates rookie Brian Sullivan and Till Joscha Joenke into the picture. For both players this was another game, but deep down it was another test that had different meanings for both. For Sullivan, he isn´t only another one of thousands that hail from the basketball talented state of Ohio, but  it was a game where he could really measure himself against top rate guards and ratiopharm Ulm boasted a handful of them. Sullivan had faced top guards game in and game out in the tough Atlantic 10 conference at Davidson and now he had the chance to battle top German point guard Per Guenther, ex Boston Celtic Chris Babb and Braydon Hobbs who like Sullivan had to prove himself in the Pro A two seasons ago with Nurnberg. Sullivan as always was in attack mode on every possession and nailed home two three pointers early finishing with eight points, but overall had his difficulty with the swarm of annoying ratiopharm Ulm guards as the Hebeisen White Wings were destroyed by ratiopharm Ulm 82-46. “It was a good challenge and a good experience going against their guards. I could see how a Chris Babb reads ball screens and how he defended me. I also learned that their guards don´t tend to force anything and let the game come to them. The guards in Germany have a good feel for the game while in the States the guards tend to focus on getting buckets”, stressed ex Davidson(NCAA) guard Brian Sullivan. Joenke on the other hand wanted to show his ex team ratiopharm Ulm where he played from 2012-2014 playing 38 BBL games and 10 Eurocup games that he had developed further in the last two years with the Walter Tigers Tuebingen and last season with the Hebeisen White Wings. After the rout, Joenke was slithering his way back to the bus and had Ulm and his past less on his mind, but rather was content about playing against top competition. “It is always good to see people from the past. I was roommates with Per Guenther for two years and still have a good relationship with Thorsten Leibenath. This was a difficult game, because we had played three games in four days. My role is to play the one and when you lose by 36 points, it doesn´t show that we did a good job. For us it was important to play against top level competition, because we can see where we made mistakes and how we should correct our mistakes”, warned ex Bayer Giants Leverkusen guard Till Joscha Joenke. Both Sullivan and Joenke want to play a successful season with Hanau and help lead the club to the playoffs while one could see himself playing in the BBL for the first time in the future while the other has claimed that he wants to return back one day as well.

(more…)