Danube Valley Athletics Conference Highschool Boys Basketball Festival, Bratislava. - January 23rd.

Teamwork, sportsmanship, hustle, and heart. Those are the words that could be used to describe the AIS Lions boys basketball team during this competitive festival. They would experience their first obstacle in the form of patience. Danube International School (DIS), AIS’ first opponent,was unable to make the original tip-off time, because of an uncontrollable circumstance, pushing the game back by an hour. Despite this delay, the
Lions came out aggressive against DIS Dragons. It was the Lions solid, team defense that carried the team throughout the contest, holding the Dragons to just 15 points. Using his lightening fast speed, Stefan Cupic was able to convert multiple steals into easy break-away layups. Petro Kruchinin and Alexey Shestakov provided a much needed spark off the bench, as they only traveled seven players. The Lions struggled shooting from the floor, but were able to pull out the 26-15 victory.
Going into the festival, the Lions knew their toughest scheduled opponent would the International Christian School of Budapest (ICSB) Bulldogs. The team, living only an hour from Bratislava, traveled very well. Not only did they have a full coaching staff, photographer, and fans but also a fourteen man roster! This did nothing but fuel the fire for the hungry Lions. Coach Louis, holding true to his goal of keeping the Bulldogs under 50 points, instituted an aggressive half-court press to counteract the ICSB offense. Constantin Schoen and Sinan Taze created more havoc for the Bulldogs’ guards than they had expected. Their constant pressure created multiple turnovers, leading to quality scoring opportunities. The Lion’s best overall defensive game was anchored by the team’s solid post presence of Georgi Dimov and Mark Bene. The Bulldogs tried to counteract with a full court press of their own, only to be picked apart by the solid guard play of Schoen and
Taze. Unfortunately the Lions again failed to convert quality scoring opportunities into points against an aggressive defense scheme. The Lions may have fallen 38-20, but they played with the heart and sportsmanship of champions.
The Lions last game would be against the American International School of Vienna (AISV) Knights. This was the Lions first game starting off in a full-court man to man defense. Overcoming the common mistakes of playing man to man defense, the Lions where able to put enough pressure on the Knights to force multiple turnovers in the AISV offense. The highlight of the game came when Petro Kruchinin, on a fast break opportunity, received a
beautiful pass from Sinan Taze and laid the ball in with a Knight defender draped all over him like a curtain. AISV played as hard as any team at the festival, but fell to the Lions 34-14.
Overall, the festival was a HUGE success for the Lions of AIS! Coach Louis
was quoted as saying:
*“This was a wonderful day of basketball for my boys. I feel that we really
grew as a team today. We still have some work to do on offense, but the
willingness to play team defense and overall sportsmanship we showed today
were more than I could have asked for. We have a great deal of potential
that we are only just beginning to tap into.”*

Last update:  Thursday, February 11, 2010