Aug. 19, 2001

By Pape Badiane, Sophomore

Today is the 19th of August. As usual, we started with breakfast at our hotel, the David Palace Best Western. We had an "American style" breakfast, which includes bacon, eggs and potatoes. Some in our group are having a hard time appreciating the typical European breakfast with a bread or croissant and milk. I have to admit, the milk tastes better to me here. After breakfast, we had a chance to go to the beach, which was only a few blocks from our hotel. As you might guess, it was very hot again here. It was also easy to get into the Adriatic Sea because the water temperature was so warm. However, only a few of us went in to swim in the sea because a lot are still too afraid (but I won't mention any names). My teammates were, of course, all excited to see some girls sunning "breast naked." A few of us rented pedal boats and tried to go out as far as possible. While on the boat, John Rabb and Tahric Gosley had a crazy idea, as usual. We made our way over to where Bill Buck (one of our managers) was swimming peacefully in the water and took off his swimsuit. Bill was more than a little upset at this...Everybody laughed and it really was a lot of fun.

We arrived back at the hotel in time for lunch, which included a first course of many types of specially prepared vegetables. Andre Williams took a whole plate thinking it was the main meal. He was crying, "I want to go home" where he could eat better, but I told him there was more coming. Sure enough, the second course included two kinds of pasta and then the third course featured chicken. There were no complaints from Andre when we were finished eating and headed up to rest for the game. We arrived at the Porto San Giorgio Palasport at around 7:30 p.m. Villanova was playing a pro team from Trieste, Slovenia. We watched as they lost by about 20 points, knowing that we were going to play the Trieste team tomorrow--a very tough challenge. Our game was against the National Italian B team. We started off slowly and were down almost 20 at the end of the first half. After being yelled at by Coach Mass at halftime, we had to react and we did. We came back almost all the way, but unfortunately fell a few points short. After the game, our bus brought us back to the hotel. The five-minute ride seemed longer after the loss. It was almost midnight now, but we still had to eat dinner. It was another three-course feast, capped off with a birthday cake to celebrate Theo Dixon's birthday. The Villanova coaches joined us for this special moment.