Game day! We would face the Austrian Champ Wels today. We have had a good shoot around this morning. Mike put at the end of practice a 10 Euro bill at the halfcourt line. And said first who is going to make a half court shot gets the 10 euros. We are shooting in an order. I was seventh though. Everybody in front of me was very close. Now it was my turn. Can you imagine, I just swooshed it in, did not even touch the rim at all. History in the making. I made the first half court shot of this new and young ratiopharm Ulm team. I felt honoured.

I have had a lot of time between practice and the game. We had to be in the gym at 6pm.

Wels wouldn`t be an easy test. Their Point Guard Moore used to play with Rip Hamilton at UConn and everybody knows that UConn won a championship with Rip Hamilton. They also had Jason Conley on the wing, and some guy who was playing at Illinois.

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We have had a nice practice week after our road win in Munich. Now we are getting prepared and ready for the weekend. We are going to play our Fritz and Maciol Cup in Ulm. Facing the current Austrian Champion Wels and also Ulm`s biggest rival Walter Tigers Tübingen. I cannot really wait until this tournament will start. Per headed back to Ulm this week. Although he is injured he seems alright. I thought he would be very down and disappointed at this moment. A couple guys of us had a lot of meetings and events going on.

We have had a player presentation on Thursday night in front of our sponsors. We got introduced to our fans and sponsors. It was very nice and we had a lot of fun as a team. The announcer asked me a couple questions and then asked me, that he had heard that I like to listen to Prince.

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Today we were heading to Munich to play our next test game against Bayern München. We were travelling in a comfortable 23-seat bus. We got there 2 hours before the game. The tip-off was at 8pm. So we had plenty of time to get loose, goof around a little bit. With 35 minutes until the game started we started to warm up. The floor was very nice and soft. It seemed easy for me to get up. But I couldn´t keep up with Rocky, Cole and Christian. They did some hilarious dunks. Talking about 360 windmills, off the back board windmill and much more. It seemed like everybody was ready for the game.

Sebastian Betz was also back in action and he seemed very comfortable at the warm ups. No signs of pain. The gym wasn`t very crowded. It was nice to see some Ulm fans in the gym. I did not know much about the Bayern munich roster and was very surprised when I saw Robert Maras, a former German national player, in the gym. He is a 7-footer. He doesn`t look that tall thou like I always imagined. But I felt very honored to get the opportunity to play against him. Well to be honest, I didn`t expect to get any playing time, since I was struggling the last game a little bit on defense. And my lastest performance in practice wasn`t cheerful. My goal for this game to bring a lot of energy from the bench and be aggressive on the defensive end and not to get beat easily.

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I was sleepy today. I slept in until 11am. I had a lot of time left, because we had to be at the meeting point at 2.30pm to leave for our second pre season game against Gmünden. It was a very short trip. We got there about an hour and a half before the game started. I got a little bit loose before we were getting back into the locker room for our personal team meeting. We didn`t know much about Gmünden, just that they did have a couple Veteran guys. And they really did.  We have had a better start than yesterday and did build a comfortable 6 point lead after a few minutes. They came back thou. Those old guys do really know how to play and how to take advantage of every single mistake.

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Today I was ready to get tested. We have had our first pre season game in Nördlingen. Fortunately it was a very close trip and we were driving with a couple cars to the game. I was still studying our playbook while we were travelling. We arrived almost two hours before the game, which was very nice, so everybody had enough time for himself to get dressed and get some shots or own drills off. Then we got, about 45 minutes before the game, back to the locker room.
Mike Taylor was introducing us the keys to success for today’s game and what we have to do and what we have to be good at to win our first game.
Then we did something what really surprised me for a second. Mike told us to come together for a prayer. So we huddled up and we or Mike started praying. The last time I was doing that was more than two years ago, while I was playing High School basketball in the states. I was really missing it. It is very hard to describe and to explain. What it is able to do with an individual and team. I do not know the right words now. It is just great to come together as a team and do things like that. It increases the team chemistry. I felt very warm and comfortable while we were praying. Surrounded by giants, which will protect me and help me up, when I am falling down.
After the prayer, we went out and did run our pre game warm-up. I felt very comfortable with my Jumpshot and everybody else did. I didn’t know that Lee Humphrey is able to dunk. It didn’t even seem hard for him.

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This practice week was very rough. Going two-a-days is not that easy like I thought it would. My legs got so tired on Tuesday already. Everything was sore. I was even too tired to fix myself something to eat at the evening. I was just lying in my bed resting.

Probably because we were also going out to the track to do some running Tuesday afternoon. It didn’t seem too hard and I won the first 400 metre run. I felt comfortable and in such a great shape. So I got a little bit too loud and I asked Coleman Collins for a race for the next 200metre sprint. Winner gets a free Burger king menu. Well he just took off. It wasn’t even close. He was probably at the finish line while I still had to run 20 metres. He is so fast for a Big Man. All he said afterwards is that he wants a large cup of Apple Cider and some extra bacon on his burger.

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