Jinzhong Arena
It was a long trip but the NetScouts Basketball Men’s and Women’s USA All-Star teams have finally arrived in China.
We are with the women’s team. After flying everyone into San Francisco to meet and have a practice on Tuesday, we headed to Beijing on a non-stop on Wednesday afternoon. After a three hour layover we boarded to short flight to Taiyuan. A 20 minute bus ride brought us to Jinzhong City where we are staying in a very nice hotel, the Jin Hua Yuan Hotel.
Personally, as the world’s pickiest eater I was concerned about the food on the trip. But it has been great. We get 3-4 buffets per days with lots of choices, many of them healthy. We get to choose between lots of vegetable dishes, fruit, seafood, etc.
We had a two hour practice this morning at the arena where we will be playing starting on July 2nd. The arena is nice and the capacity is about 6,000. We’ll have another two hour practice later this afternoon.
That will be pretty much our schedule for the next few days leading up to the tournament. The weather here has been rainy but it finally stopped and temperatures are expected to be in the upper 80’s for the next few days.
The Men’s team will be playing their first game today. We’ll bring you the story about it later assuming the internet connection holds up.
Do you have a men’s roster and list of coaches?
Steve
Hi Steve, Thanks for the note. We’ll have a roster included in our first game article. Please check back each day as the tour progresses.
Carl Berman
Will there be photos and box scores of the womens games as well?
Jake
Thank you, Carl for these daily entries! We really enjoyed reading yours and Coach Johnson’s blogs during the last trip also!
Is there an accessible schedule for the women’s games?
Lorey Bussey
Hi Lorey. We will be playing the Chinese National Team the nights of July 2, 3 and 4 at 730pm local Chinese time. The games will be broadcast live throughout China on CCTV the equivalent of ESPN.
Carl Berman
Was wondering why was this team devopled? and how do they go about picking a roster? Good Luck!!!!
Joe Schumacher
It was developed to provide competition for Team China and to bring basketball tournaments to areas of China that generally may not have that exposure.
Carl Berman