TicketsNov. 25, 2009
The University of Cincinnati women's basketball team is in Alaska for the 2009 Great Alaska Shootout. Senior guard Shelly Bellman will chronicle the trip in a daily blog on GoBEARCATS.com.
Day 3
Day 3 was great………BECAUSE WE WON!!! "We goin to the ship, we goin to the ship man!" Were going to the championship game, just like our men's team. I hope we both bring home first place trophies!
To start our 3rd day in Alaska, we woke up, went down to the hotel ballroom to have breakfast (which is my favorite meal of the day), watched some film on Western Carolina, and had our gameday shootaround. All that went well. Nothing too exciting, but what we did next was definitely cool.
Our coach driver gave us a little bus tour of downtown Anchorage. He is a great tour guide, because he knows all of these fun and interesting facts about Alaska. Anchorage is the biggest city in Alaska. There are about 679,000 people that live in Alaska, and 270,000 are in Anchorage. And, I thought that in Alaska, it was cold all year round, but in the summer, it gets to about 70 degrees. Also, from downtown Anchorage, where our hotel is, you can see this beautiful mountain range to the East. The mountains look so big and gorgeous, and we all thought that they were farther away than they appear. Some of us guessed that they were at least an hour away if we drove there, but I asked our coach driver how far the mountains were from us. He surprisingly said that they were only 10 miles away!!! That is exciting! He said that where he lives, you can walk out his backyard, and you look straight up at the mountains that you're face to face with. How would you like that for a backyard view?
Our bus driver took us to this perfect spot that had the most stunning view of the landscape. We all got out of the bus, and our eyes were just glued to the water of the bay right infront of us, slowly moving with the ice on top of it, and the skyscraping mountains that looked like they came right out of a picture. We got our cameras out to try and capture the striking scenery to bring back home and show our friends and family. We also took some team pictures of course, and here is one of them with the mountains in the background. As we headed back to the hotel, we were on this street that was lined with Alaska souvenir shops. We saw this big fluffy grizzly bear outside of one of the shops, and we wanted to stop to take a picture with it too. NO IT WASN'T REAL! Just a fake one that couldn't have been life size. Real grizzly bears are a lot bigger than this right?
So then we went back to the hotel, had about an hour and a half of study table time to do school work (because back at home, there are people still going to classes and we are surely not). And then we ate our pregame meal, which consisted of salad, vegetables, spaghetti with meatballs, chicken, buns, and milk or juice. We need good food to get us energized and ready for big games of course, and that seemed to do the trick! Off to the game we went.
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We left a little earlier than normal to watch the Alaska Anchorage vs Coastal Carolina game before us. We did some scouting so we had an idea of the next team we were going to play in our next day's game, of course at that point hoping, and assuming, it was going to be the championship game. Alaska Anchorage won, and they're a really good team. They won this shootout the past three years. If we want it, we will have to take it from them!
8:00 came, and "What time is it?" as Coach Moore always asks when he walks into the lockerroom. "GAME TIME!" We were pumped up and ready. Tip off!
We were a little sluggish in the first half. Definitely didn't play like we have potential to, but we got it together at halftime and played much better the second half. We beat Western Carolina, and now have our sights on Alaska Anchorage. Game time is 5:00 Alaskan time, Wednesday afternoon. Let's go CATS!...or like Michelle Jones likes to say, "Let's go BearKitties!"
Day 4 and championship game day to come!