EuroBasket Women 2017

It was a great honour for me to be able to help out FIBA's senior women's basketball writer Paul Nilsen on the live blog for the first stages of the tournament, and to be able to welcome all my FIBA friends to my home city too!

Once the tournament reached the last eight, with all the games at Prague's o2 arena, Paul took the reins for the live blog for the rest of the way, so the archive shows his contributions at the end - you have to scroll down and click "Oldest" to see the opening day, when I shared duties with him.

I was covering the Prague group, and frantically hoping that my phone wouldn't go off at any point, with my wife around eight months pregnant at the time!

Celebrating Greek legend Evina Maltsi was a story that wrote itself on the first day after she lifted her team to a huge win and then gave a heartfelt and emotional performance in the press-conference afterwards.

On the second day, I was able to speak to Belgian legend Ann Wauters, whose team would go on to take bronze overall. I later spoke to Emma Meesseman, as well as on both occasions getting some nice quotes from head coach Philip Mestdagh, who was very well-spoken and charming.

I caught up with my old friend Damir Grgic, who I knew from the U18 in Slovenia, after their famous first-ever victory at that level, plus I spoke with Eva Lisec for the piece too - it was a great relaxed chat with the pair of them at the team hotel.

My interview with Latvian head coach Martins Zibarts almost went awry after a long day left me with minimal battery on my phone, which I was using to record audio. Bad planning on my part. Fortunately I got enough on tape, and I remembered a couple of other quotes, so I was able to make a piece out of it, but it was frustrating to make such a mistake.

I managed to get Sonja Petrovic after her huge performance kept Serbia in the tournament. Obviously it was huge for me to get her - she was one of USK Praha's stars for the previous couple of years, so I was quite giddy in her presence! And she's so nice, she was really happy to chat, despite being clearly exhausted!

The French team proved a bit hard to nail down, but eventually I was able to get Endy Miyem for 20 minutes at the hotel and she was wonderful too. I caught Greek center Artie Spanou after their brilliant quarter-final victory, and again, her exuberance led to an instant article in its own right.

And then the ultimate: I was able to arrange for Spain to give me 15 minutes at the hotel with captain (and USK Praha superstar playmaker) Laia Palau. And she was very thoughtful and helpful and cool, and I was really proud of how that piece came out.

I ended up writing the semi-finals and final preview too, as well as the match report for the Final!