Sinan Güler Online

It has been a while since I wrote in here, so I would like to put together a short recap of the games that we have played since the last post and I would like to also add our situation in Turkish League and Euroleague.

The last video that was posted below was from the All-Star break, which was a good night for the Turkish players. In the 3-point contest, National Team guard Engin Atsur won. It was my third appearence in the the Slam Dunk contest in Turkey and despite failing in the finals in the previous two, this year I won with a lot of support from the fans in Kayseri.

After the break, we played 6 games in the Turkish League and we won all but one, which was against Fenerbahce Ulker, last years runner-up team. Currently we are leaders in the league with 17 wins and 2 losses, and our follower Fenerbahce is ranked second with 3 losses.

We also played quarter finals in the Turkish Cup and this weekend ended unexpectedly for us, we got knocked out by our big rival Fenerbahce in the semi-finals. We were the winners of previous year in this tournament.

In Euroleague, we managed to qualify for Top 16 after the last game of the first group. Than we found ourselves in a tough group, which it seems like nobody can lose at home. So far, after 4 games, all the teams are 2-2 and the point differences will play a great role for the teams that will qualify to top 8.

The month of February was full of important games for us and with the first week of March, the tough schedule will continue with two important games in the TBL and two decision-making games in the Euroleague.

Our next game is against my brother’s team Besiktas Cola Turka, and it is our 13th match-up since I started playing professional. Currently we are tied, both have 6 wins against us, but the tie will have to end this Sunday.

Please don’t forget to share your thoughts and comments on the website, we are trying to improve the site as much as possible, and hope your insights will help us bring a better website.

“Sinan Guler is a beast, which is exactly why he’s agreed to do a series of interviews with our very own Freaknick. Sinan Guler goes hard. Try and keep up.”

To read the rest of the interview please click here.

Hello everybody,

First, I would like to apologize to you for neglecting the website for a long time. We were at one point very busy with basketball and I didn’t have much time to update it as often as I wanted to. Hopefully with 2010, I will bring more new stuff to the website and update it more often.

2009 was a busy year for me, although we had an unsuccessful year with Efes Pilsen in Euroleague, in Turkey, we won the Turkish Cup and became champions of the Turkish League.

After the regular season, I was chosen to the second National team to play in the Mediterranean Games in Pescara, Italy and we won bronze medal after losing to Greece in the semi-finals. It was a great experience for me and I gained a lot of confidence during this period. After that I was chosen to the main National team to play in the Eurobasket 2009 in Poland. After a great start in the championship, we could not continue our good performance and in the quarter finals we lost to Greece and we finished the tournament 8th.

Back in the new season, we started off with winning the President’s Cup. In the Euroleague, we lost some close games so far, and starting with 2010, we are hoping to change our bad luck in the Euroleague.

Every year can be a new beginning and hope 2010 will be the year for good luck and happiness for you all. Hope you keep following my website as often as you can, and leave your feedback to improve it.

Sinan

After a tough start at the Turkish Cup Preliminary round, we bounced back by winning the President’s Cup against Fenerbahce Ulke, and started to think about the long marathon ahead of us.

So far in Turkish League we played Mersin Buyuksehir, Banvit and Turk Telekom and we are 2-1 in the league. On the road against Mersin, we played very well on the both sides of the court and dominated most of the game for an easy win.

Against Banvit at home, we played terrible the first 3 quarters of the game, but had good defensive effort and when finally we opened up in the 4th quarter, we managed to win the game with comfortable enough lead. (71-61)

In Ankara, we played our third game against Turk Telekom, who is always a good squad to play against, and this game was a nail biter till the end. We didn’t play at our level in the first half but 3rd quarter we got back into the game, and took a lead, which we couldn’t secure. Towards the final minutes, Ankara team was the team making the plays, and they gave us our first loss in the league. (87-83)

In Turkish League, these kind of losses can be taken care of in the future games and season is long, so there will be enough opportunities for us to cover this loss.

In the Euroleague however, we got off to a bad start, we lost 2 games on the road and won our home game. Against Lietuvos Rytas on the road, we never played as good as we wanted to and their tough presence all over the court overmatched us.

Our second game was against Partizan in our own home court and with a great crowd supporting us, we played a game that we wanted to play throughout the whole season and we got our first Euroleague win. (77-67)

Yesterday, we played against Unicaja Malaga, who was 0-5 in the ACB league, but was 2-0 in the Euroleague. And last week, they beat Olympiakos at home by 20 points. But we came here for a most needed win to gain advantage in the group, and altough we trailed by 18 points at one point of the game, our defensive effort brought us back in the game, and we got the lead at one point towards the end, but the game slipped out of our hands in the overtime, when they scored 20 point against a tired team. (93-88)

We have our on and off days in both leagues so far, but it seems like we need to manage to play consistent game in and game out in order to reach the success that we want this year. And we need to keep playing as a team and spread the tough, aggressive basketball.

It was a tough weekend for us. To be honest, I didn’t expect that it would take another team to decide our destiny in the Turkish Cup. Coming to the elimination round, I was thinking, we would add more to our success from last year, but after playing three games in Izmir, we had to wait to learn that we qualified for the Turkish Cup Quarter Finals at the airport.

The first two games were almost identical, except the outcomes. First we had a comfortable lead, than losing the momentum of the game and the lead. First game we managed to win the game, but second game we lost by 3 points. The basketball we have been playing is far away from the game that we want to play and that is something that we really need to focus on until the President’s Cup that we are going to play on Thursday.

Third game we started slow this time, and we built the comfortable lead towards the end of the game, and we won the game. With Besiktas Cola Turka beating Kepez with 6 points, we are in the Top 8 for the Turkish Cup that will be in February.

Now all of our focus is on the President’s Cup against Fenerbahce Ulker on Thursday. Hopefully we will make a needed return with winning the cup.

We fought for forty minutes and brought the game back 2 points after trailing by 19 in the first half.

It was important that we show the potential to win the game even after a big margin of lead ahead of us.

We found the final shot, but couldn’t come through with it, still it was great by Ender and Engin to get that open at the end.

Now we are playing Greece on friday and we are focused already for that game in the Quarter finals of the Eurobasket’09.