In her words: Iowa’s Wahlin on basketball tour Part III

Dobry den (good afternoon) from Prague!  I'm starting to pick up a little bit of the language…too bad we are leaving tomorrow!

I'll fill you in on the last few activities we've done since the last time I blogged.  Last night we took a boat tour around Prague.  It was pretty interesting to hear how old some of the buildings are and the sights around the river were amazing.  We had a great time taking pictures as a team and just hanging around for the night.  After the boat tour, we found a local restaurant and had some great Czech food.  I had the goulash and it was AWESOME!

Our first activity this morning was touring Prague Castle.  It was fascinating.  The coolest part of the castle was St. Vitus Cathedral.  It's a massive cathedral that started being built in the 10

^th

century and was finished in 1929.  The attention to detail in the stain glass windows was pretty cool to see.  I couldn't believe the size of the cathedral.

We took more time to walk around the entire castle complex before walking back across the river on St. Charles Bridge.  The sculptures and statues on the bridge were also impressive.  I just can't believe the time it must have taken to make all these beautiful buildings in Prague.

Today was our first game, so we had a pregame meal together in the hotel and hopped on a bus for a 90 minute ride to a local town.

The game was really close and we won in the last five seconds on a Sam Logic pull-up jumper in the lane!  It was a clos e game all the way through and we went on a 5-0 run in the final two minutes to go up five points.  The team we played came back and tied it with 20 seconds left but we came out on top after a well-executed final play.  It was fun to start the trip 1-0!

The European style of play was definitely different.  It's MUCH more physical and there are only two refs, so they don't see as many travels or other types of calls.  The fouls that were called were much different.  It seemed like they let the physical play go a lot more, but touch fouls were called all the time.  It's an adjustment we will have to make heading into our next games.

It was a lot of fun to get back on the court and I thought we played well for our first game.  We definitely have some things to work on and we are nowhere close to “midseason form,” but we can take a lot of positives out of the first game.

We are on the way back to Prague right now after the team we played hosted us for a meal.  They might have played physical, but they were very hospitable and we really appreciated them hosting us for a meal!

I'll check in with everyone tomorrow when we make it to Bratislava!  We have really enjoyed Prague and I'm ready to see another country.

GO HAWKS!

Kamille