Back on the bandwagon

Seeing as how the Sixers had won two in a row, I thought it was time I jumped back on the bandwagon. Took my Dad to the game against Cairns last night, my first regular season game this year.

I had no idea who was on the Taipans these days, so was kind of surprised to see they have two ex-Sixer players - Mee and Cattalini. Cattalini doesn't start though, and Mee went almost the whole game without scoring, so times have changed. Actually, they mentioned at the start of the game that they were integral members of the team in 98 and 99 and it hit me that that's a decade ago, a long time in the past.

Right from the first quarter the Sixers struggled to keep up with Cairns, who were playing a full court press. The Sixers were doing pretty much the opposite defensively, not even picking up players properly in the half court, and giving up some wide open threes. We fell behind my 17 points, and the only Sixer really playing well was Brad Hill, who at least took it to the basket a bit.

In the second quarter things improved and we started to close the gap a little as the team picked up the defense. Tyndale did some nice things, and the big front line of Schenser, Cooper and Ballinger was really good defensively. Where we struggled though was the guard play - Maher was injured again, and although I've heard good things about Aaron Bruce, he was terrible. It wasn't just the fact that he missed every shot he took (including a wide open three that he airballed), he played some pretty bad D leading to open three pointers by the other team, and had some suspect decision making. Maybe he was worn down by the full court D. It reminded me of when I used to watch Spurs games, and whenever Udrih was on the other team would go to a full court press, and poor Beno would turn the ball over. After that I've never had any faith in little Beno as an NBA player, although I guess Ash must have missed those contests.

Anyway, by the end of the third quarter the Sixers had actually put together an eight point lead - 59 - 51. They went completely dry offensively in the first few minutes of the fourth period though, and Cairns closed the cap quickly.

With about thirty seconds left we had the ball, up by one. Bruce dribbled around till the shot clock was almost gone, and jumped in the air to pass. Of course, the ball was stolen, and the Taipans were headed the other way on a fast break. Tyndale came up with a freakish block on what would have been the game winning layup, but the ball went straight back to a Taipan player, who swung it to Mee, who was cutting to the basket. As soon as he laid the ball up I knew it was dropping in, and knew it was going to bounce around the rim just long enough for the buzzer to sound.

It did, and the Cairns guys went crazy as the Sixers stood around looking stunned.

It was a really good game and the guys showed a lot of heart coming back from such a big first half deficit, but I suppose they didn't really deserve to win the way they played.

Not really sure what the problem with the team is, although like I said I think a lot of it is the backcourt. Bruce was absolutely horrible (missing every fg attempt, and five of his six free throws) but we still seem to lack a really great, creative, explosive guard. The front line is really solid, but then you've got Holmes who's a bit of a tweener, Winitana who hasn't showed much after the preseason, Hill who's not really that consistent. Maher would have helped I suppose but he's definitely winding down now.

A few final thoughts . . .

Cattalini is still a bit of a bad tempered jerk. Was more fun when he was on our team though.

I never thought I'd say this, but we miss Ng and his long range shooting. Unfortunately I think he's focussing on his schoolwork this season. Hopefully he can reach some sort of arrangement with his Mum and Dad where he's allowed to play next year, maybe by promising to do his homework before practice or something.

The refs seemed rather bad . . . although that's not meant as a complaint because it was going both ways, Cattalini got mugged on a few of his shots without a foul. But then they were calling some really light fouls on what seemed like pretty clean blocks.

Unfortunately Dad and I were sitting in front of a guy who just talked the whole night, trying to show off his knowledge of basketball and the NBL I imagine. Not fun.

Fight Club

For the past few months my mate Matt and I have been doing weights at the gym, and watching the Mixed Martial Arts class that runs in the room next door. We'd discussed joining the "Fight Club", as Matt dubbed it, on numerous occasions, but never got round to it. Last week though I ran into one of the instructors while at the gym, got the details, and we turned up last night for our first class.


We joined another ten guys and girls of varying sizes, plus a huge guy called Dave who was the instructor. He mentioned that he'd accepted an offer to fight an-ex WWE wrestler in a MMA event in Florida in five weeks time, so I figured he was not someone to mess with.

We started off with a "warm up session", first of all crawling around on all fours, then on our toes and fingertips. It's kind of hard crawling on your fingertips when you weigh 100 odd kilos. Next we did "pikes", a kind of sit up but harder, followed by pushups (on our knuckles, just for added difficulty). Then we did about twenty squats or so, which weren't heaps easy.

Next up, we put on the gloves, and matched up against a partner. We worked on left-right jab combos to the head, and using the gloves to protect the face. We did a few other types of combos and blocking, then we worked on taking a punch. Which meant one of us held our hands in the air, while the other one punched them in the stomach. This wasn't as bad as it could have been, since we were wearing gloves. Unfortunately for Matt though, he took a bare knuckle punch from the instructor when he decided to show me how it was done. Not having had a lot of experience getting punched in the belly lately, this started to get to me after a while, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

The instructor then decided we would do squats again, so we did 20 or so of these, and I was hurting. Then he said "OK, now we're going to do 100".

You've got to be freaking kidding me.

I knew there was no way I could do that, but I wasn't going to not try. I managed to get most of them, cheating a bit when the instructor turned around to face the other side of the class. At one point, he told me "Don't bend your back, it's going to be sore tomorrow". I thought of responding "All of me is going to be sore", then I remembered that he's willingly fighting this guy next month, and thought better of it.

After that we were given 30 seconds for a drink, then came back with the gloves and worked on some punching kicking combinations. Obviously someone thought we didn't get enough punishment to our midsections earlier, because then we did an exercise where we each got to kick our partner in the ribs ten times.

After this it slowed down a bit, it was more wrestling/grappling type stuff, with the instructor demonstating moves and us copying them. At one point he left to use the bathroom and told us all to do pushups till he got back. Awesome. I got through about thirty, then held the last one until he came back, then started doing them again.

The whole session lasted perhaps an hour and 40 minutes, and left me completely stuffed. He said at the end "I think you'd all agree it was a pretty light session tonight", so I'm a bit worried about what a heavy one will be like. He also told us that there'd be a two week break and we'd be starting again at a new location, because they wanted to "ramp up" our training. Not sure what that means specifically, hopefully it's not related to an increase in stomach punching.

I'm pretty keen to stay at it though, not just in terms of the physical side, but also the mental strength I reckon it will bring. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I think that's a good thing, you've got to stretch yourselves sometimes. Even if it does involve being repeatedly kicked in the ribs.