HOMELAND SECURITY

It's innate for us men to protect what's ours, especially when it comes to your home. When intruders approach, it's time to fight and defend but even more important is that it's time to protect what's rightfully yours.

This season many teams have attempted to step foot into Konstanz with the hope of winning the battle. Many have tried, few have succeeded. In fact, none have succeeded. We have managed to achieve a unprecedented undefeated record at home. I'm not sure exactly how many games that is but when you have zero losses at home it doesn't matter. That's pretty impressive and this week was our last home test of the season. We played the team who has sat atop of the standings pretty much all season long. They arrogantly stormed into our Hall with the expectations of winning. Probability wise their chances were good seeing that we lost last week.

Unfortunately, Holiday Check Baskets had other plans. We posses something called pride and although our chances of winning the Championship have narrowed, we still are professionals. Therefore, we must maintain that image not just for the fans, but for ourselves. And that's what we did. We protected our home in the most professional manner possible and left the likes of the league leaders with disappointed faces when the clock struck zero.

The funny thing is that we had a chance to move into second place because of the point system used in Germany to calculate the standings. You see, this week the 1st place team competed against the 3rd place team. Next week, the 1st place team plays against the 2nd place team. It will be the last game of the season. Seeing that the 1st place and 2nd place team have identical records, the winner will pretty much take all. Well if the 1st place team loses next week consequently they would move to 2nd place and thus having an identical win loss record with the 3rd place team (Holiday Check Baskets). It then would come down to head to head competition to determine who would acquire the 2nd place spot. Earlier in the year we lost to them by 14 points. So, if we won by 15 points that would put us ahead in the point column. And it couldn't have been scripted any better. There was about 10 seconds left and the other team was shooting free throws. At this point we are up by 12 points. Fortunate for us 2 misses followed but we couldn't get our hands on the rebound. A foul was called and they went back to the free throw line with now about 8 seconds. Two more misses follow and fate was in our control. We rebounded the ball and an outlet pass was thrown in my direction. I chased after the ball and paced down the floor with one goal, shooting the 3 pointer. I sailed down the right side and crossed over and pulled up for the 3 ball. It felt good and it looked good. I just knew that it was going to hit the bottom of the net and it nicked the front of the rim and bounced up and rimmed out.

That's not even the sad part though. Well really there is nothing to be sad about because we won, but I was a little disappointed. I was disappointed because we were actually up by 13 points and only needed 2 points to get the head to head point advantage. I somehow miscalculated while they were shooting free throws. It might not mean much to you but for me it meant a lot because I believe in our team and for me 3rd place finish is an underachievement. A 2nd place finish is also an underachievement but 2nd place sounds and looks better than 3rd.

Overall, it was a good game and even better season. I'm really looking forward to the future in Germany but I'm very glad that God managed to introduce Michael Lay to Konstanz.

Thank all the wonderful fans for their constant love and support of our team. I hope they enjoyed watching us play just as much as I enjoyed being here.