FIBA U16W 2018

Mainly on the Live Feed, which didn't go too well on Day 1 (technical issues and out-of-touch etc), but went pretty smoothly for the rest.

Day 2 at the smaller arena

Just two features, Giulia Natali of eventual winners Italy and Sude Yilmaz of tournament darlings Turkey, neither of which I was particularly satisfied with from the interview perspective (in that my interviews didn't go well). Giulia was great but I forgot a vital question, and Sude was overwhelmed after the great win. I need to try and work out, with this new format, how to find a better time/place to conduct any interviews.

My record with the Czech youth teams extended to four silvers in six tournaments after another incredible run. Obviously I tend to look out for them, but they had the remarkable games of Day 1 and Day 2, and they won their Quarter-Final with a shot in the final few seconds before falling just short to Italy in a brilliant Final - I commented to friends beforehand that I feared an Italian blowout and it looked that way with Italy leading by 22 with 12 minutes to go, but an 18-0 run gave us the thrilling finale that the tournament deserved, albeit I'm sure my friend Italian coach Giovanni Lucchesi could have lived without it!

Italy deserved their title, with a fantastic group surviving a daunting route of France in the Quarter-Finals and Spain in the Semi-Finals. Those two (in particular the Semi-Final win over Spain) were special games to bear witness to.

Kaunas treated us very well - lots of nice people who spoke great English. I got a selfie with Arvydas Sabonis and I even played for the first time in years (I'd been working out having not really done any sport for a couple of years!).

looking VERY tired here after staying up to 5am working the night before!

Average sleep time was definitely about 3am - as bad as 5am when I needed to get the features done before the rest days. But aside from the fantastic last-day adventure (writing up details from the Final until 12:30am, then to a city-centre club with a VIP section reserved until 3am, then back to the hotel, shower and last things into suitcase, taxi to Vilnius, check in at 5am, flight at 7am, change at Kiev, LONG transfer queue so just skipped to front waving paper, land at Prague at 10:30am, finally see wife and poor BABY after 10 days away!), the best extra-curricular fun of the trip was definitely a quiet beer out with Pierre that became "what's that noise?" at 1:30am - I realised it was the 5th-floor place that a local had recommended so we went to check it out, grabbed a beer, chatted... Then Pierre needed to know something so just stopped a guy "hey do you work here?" "er, no!" - the guy was a pilot from Netherlands who lived in Kaunas and chatted with us for ages before taking us to hang with his mates until the bar closed at 4am. Cool people, good times. And (the days get hazy) I think that was a Tuesday in Kaunas, which all the locals were telling us was "dead" because the students were at home in the summer. Fantastic.