Did you miss me?

Not som many writting comments and the stats on these blogs never tell the truth, so I dont know if anybody missed me, but lets just say like it is been working like a lunatic the last 6 weeks and this week I have gotten a terrible tonsillitis, so sick like a dog is plain and simple what I`m. Allthough a little beter today and that is great since I have som young coaches education tomorrow and the be able to speak to them helps a lot.

I have for the first time in I dont know how many years just seen 1½ games of the march madness games and of the final four games I only have seen the first half of one of them. I haven`t had the time, but some years ago I would have seen them anyway, so you might say I have gotten a little bit wisser with age. Its painful to realize that you aint 20 years old anymore and can sleep little, work much and party hard "all the time" :-)

Actually the club that I coach in now Hørsholm Basketball hade one of their former players in the playoff games and thats pretty unique. He plays in Old Dominion and they played Butler in the first game and lost with 2 points, so could have been even better. I remember the kid from many years back and I remember what I saw and what I saw was possibiltys to become a force. At 2.11cm and moveable you are always wanted in the basketball world.

See his profile here: Anton Larsen

Not many coaches from the nordic countries can say they had a player in  the playoffs of the NCAA, well after this year some can celebrate with a extra brewed danish beer maybe :-)

Back to bed and try to sleep between all the coughing....And all the games missed? Well new madness next year ;-)

Third double seed to reach

The final four, before VCU rams there was LSU in 1986 and George Mason in 2006, now 11th seed Rams outplayed the nr 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks.

Because I´m been working like a maniac the last 4 weeks I have only seen small parts of games, so this game was actually my first full game and I truly enjoyed it.

Rams doesn´t play as static as many teams do and that makes them so much harder to controll. The had a couple of minutes in the second half where they started to hesitate and became stuck in the offense, but they shook it of them. But with a lot of help from Kansas, they didn`t reach their capacity at all of course VCU did a good job, but where Kansas failed was in their heads, the weren`t mentally prepaired for a underdog with a young coach that thinks he can move mountains and gets his players to beleive that also....and he did, they di move a mountain tonite.

Kansas is out, Duke is out.....11th seed VCU is still in it and they are going for gold. Believe that!

And by the way, great with a young coach only 33 years old, maybe people can understand that leadership, basketball knowhow is not garanteed just because you are old. Experience is age based, but coaching is not.

We (basketball) have come a long way since...

Found this great video :-)

I just love old stuff with basketball in it, its so much fun to watch and this is actually the first nationally televised womens collegegame back in 1975.
Womens basketball has come a long way since 1975, the differences are remarkable, but shouldn`t the women refs have kept the skirts? Bring it back 2012, just kiddin :-)

I dissed 2 leaguegames today

Thats not something that happens or has happened a lot in my life, but had my sister and boyfriend and daughter here visiting me in denmark.

I was a fun visit but of course I got to check the results on the net:-)

Tonight I`m looking forward to watching my favourite collegeteam Duke play against Wake Forresty at 22:00 european time. Was some weeks ago I saw my last Duke game, but fun that Coach K has gone back to the old kind of Duke gamestyle.

Tommorrow first normal game witht he kids and that will be fun allthought the country is right now hammered with sickness and my team is no exception. Hade 9 of 16 players on last practise, one injured and 6 home sick.

Yesterday I was late to practise since I couldn`t get of work in time. I entered the gym and this gym has the entrance on the second floor and have glasswondows facing the gym, so I stood and watched forst for some time before I went down to the court.
I was proud...my 12 year old kids the weren`t jerking around, they had by themself started practise and when I came into the gym they were playing 3-3-3.
Have had many teams during the years, that it would have looked something like this:

- Lowered basket and dunking on 2,60 basket
- Throwing balls from halfcourt
- Sitting/standing and talking
- Using some other stuff in the gym like ropes, trampoline
And so on.....

These team/kids is the real thing and thats makes me so so happy since I have the chance to work with this group.

I always had a dream and the terrorists killed it

I guess the dream is still there, but because of certain things that have happened. I had to put the dream a side to take care of other things in my life.

My biggest dream has always to become a collegebasketball coach with responsibiltys/speciality in individual training.

When I was 23 years old because of that I was unemployed I was able to get 6 months paid to work somewhere internationally all paid by the swedish goverment. I contacted a friend who was coaching at Louisiana Lafyette, sun belt conference in NCAA d1 and ask if he could ask the headcoach if they could use me for a season.

He said yes and everything was going as planned I got the "schoolership" so the money was reserved for me. Now all that was left was work VISA that the colllege had to apply for (28 A4 pages), once that was cleared I could apply for my personal VISA and that was only gonna take maximum 2 weeks (for my personal VISA).

The work VISA had no swedish got before 5 monts after it was applied for, but I was happy I could wait.
I had decided that I would never come back even if I had to live in boxes in the streets of USA.....I was confident that my skills, and knowledge of the game would lead to work opertunitys.

Then that happened that crushed my dream there was these guys that think they will make a better world by killing others and totally controlled by religion they have tunnelvision and brainwashed to the max they decided to fly planes into the world trade center and create total caos in the USA.

After 7 months of waiting for the work VISA I got a letter in my mail and it was the saddest day in my life until that point in my life. It said because that VISA has gone passed 6 months without being cleared they took back the money that was reserved for me.

I was crushed....totally and even the newspapers had knowledge of me going to college, so they had written about it in the biggest paper in the south of Sweden. The following months was some of the hardest months in my life.
Every week I got the question "Aint you in the USA?", "When do you leave for Louisiana?" and so on. I just wanted to hide, some weeks was so hard mentally I didn`t wanna face the outside world, but I did but with pain and headcaches.
Everybody that knows me knows what love I got for the greatest game, every player that I coaches have felt my love fro the game, but NOBODY could even if they tried to understand feel the pain I had after my chance got crushed by the terrorists. It was a chance that not many get and I had the chance without any money to get it paid and go to a respected school that always are top 3 in sun belt conference and play NIT.

Headcoach never had a loosing season I had a chance of a lifetime the learn, to live and to do what I wanted to do.

This is something that have haunted me for years and still do. But the terrorists killed my dream, but its starting to grow again slowly, slowly, so I guess they killed it but its resurrecting again.

Maybe in some years I will start chasing my biggest dream again and by then I hope all terrorists have been burried in cave.

Last saturday I got the news that one of my close basketballfriends suddenly died at his home to young only 44 years old. All of a sudden everything else feels totally unimportant.

RIP Anders "Ante" Erixon you truly loved the game and you where a great friend and I will miss extremelly much, I see you when I get there!

If I just was a little bit younger....

....I would stay up all night long and enjoy.

7:00 PM	ET		Binghamton vs Marshall	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Bucknell vs Loyola (MD)	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Fairfield vs Florida	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Kent State vs Morehead State	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Minnesota vs Wisconsin	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Siena vs St. Bonaventure	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Union Ky College vs Liberty	01:00	CET
7:00 PM	ET		Western Carolina vs North Carolina-Asheville	01:00	CET
8:00 PM	ET		Ball State vs Valparaiso	02:00	CET
8:00 PM	ET		Central Baptist Coll vs Arkansas State	02:00	CET
9:00 PM	ET		North Carolina vs Rutgers	03:00	CET
9:00 PM	ET		Providence vs Syracuse	03:00	CET
10:00 PM	ET		Pacific vs Cal State Northridge	04:00	CET
10:00 PM	ET		UC Davis vs Cal State Fullerton	04:00	CET
10:00 PM	ET		UC Riverside vs UC Irvine	04:00	CET
10:00 PM	ET		Philadelphia Flyers vs Vancouver Canucks	04:00	CET
10:30 PM	ET		Hartford vs California	04:30	CET
11:00 PM	ET		Long Beach State vs UC Santa Barbara	05:00	CET

USC vs Kansas Jayhawks

I watched most of the game today and the home winstreak of 64 games in a row by the Jayhawks was deaply threatened today byt USC, who should have won the game, but very bad choices by USC helped Jayhawks to come back and take it by 3 points.

USC had a great chance to win game with 6,3 seconds left and the had inbound at baseline, they took timeout and came out with the same inbound play as they had run before, I simply dont understand that when you know how well scouted the teams are. They had big problems getting the ball into play and when they did there player mad a totally silly misstake he stepped out of the court allthough he had plenty of space he still did it.

They fouled with 4,3 seconds left and Kansas made their first and missed there second and a lucky bounce of the rim left it in the corner and that took to much time of the clock for USC to get a good shoot of in time, theys till had a long throw which hit the backboard, but win 65 straight at home for the Kansas Jayhawks is a fact. Thats currently the longest activ winning streak at home in NCAA div1 basketball.

The game in whole was a blend of veyr bad basketball and great plays. What i dont understand if you are gonna play 2 million pick and rolls, why dont teach the players to use it and read it?

For us that have a cuople of hours a week the teach our players the game is har as hell, but now we are talking college ball where they nearly have umlimited time with the players during the season.
The game gave me another question if you dont have the players to play pick and roll, why play it so much?

My player of the game was Nikola Vujevic of USC, they didn`t use him well especially in the first half but in the second half it was a little more and he has skills.