If there would be heaven and if I would have been dead - I think I had just experienced the Basketball Heaven!!

Who knows how many games of basketball I see every year, and there have been some great games there in the past years - World Championship Finals, Olympic Finals, NBA games, domestic games... and so on. It takes some beating to get to the TOP 3 games that I've seen (not as a game, but as the atmosphere inside the venue, but tonight in the EuroChallenge game at Karsiyaka.. it went straight into the TOP 3 (or at least VERY close).

Often it happens that when the favourite takes a big lead inside the first minutes, the games goes a bit flat - but these Turkish fans!!! MAN!! They just kept on jumping up and down, singing and chanting - only other game that I can think of to be on the same level all through out the game was in 2010 - World Championships game between Turkey and Greece in Ankara. But this Pinar Karsiyaka crowd of 4500 gave a good account of themselves, and if I would have to choose a place to come and support a basketball team.. I could do a lot worse than Karsiyaka in Izmir!

The game - well, not much need to talk about that - Pinar took the lead early on and Kataja were always chasing it from then on. The visitors did get into the game as it went on, but by then they were only trying to keep the gap to a minimum - but they gave a good performance against a team that regularly competes against EuroLeague team in the Turkish League. It is never nice to lose a game.. but this time there was no shame in it.

After the game the players of Kataja were in awe of the crowd, yes - they were all disappointed to lose a game of basketball.. but if you watch the interview of Jonte Flowers.. and his answer to what it was like to play in front of a crowd like this. No matter how I would explain it myself.. his expression and words tell it better than I ever could!! (so, that's a hint to watch the video ;-)

INTERVIEWS WITH : Jukka Toijala (in Finnish), Jonte Flowers (in English) and Petri Virtanen (in Finnish) :

PinarInterviews

Even the experience coach Jukka Toijala said in the post game interview that the game went into his Top5 games, as an atmosphere - and that comes from a coach who has been here and there with Team Finland and in domestic terms. 

From Media point of view - Internet was a struggle, luckily first of all found someone to give me the password (well, they didn't give it to me - they logged me in). But with the tight dead-lines back in Finland for the papers - they wanted images straight away.. Maybe it was all the singing and jumping up and down that caused the Wi-FI signal to get lost.. Luckily it 'sort of' came back for a brief moment on the third quarter so I managed to wire off couple of pictures quickly.

Then after the game.. Wi-Fi was lost again.. so it was a mad rush to get back to the Hotel.. along the now familiar roads.. over the bridge (that's a three lane Motorway with no pedestrian walkway) - through the dark alleys.. under the Izban tracks and back into my cozy hotel room.

If you guys have never seen Pinar Karsiyaka fans - I recommend you to do a quick search on YouTube for their fan-videos.. search for Pinar vs Galatasaray .. and maybe add keywords (Kill them all). Worth two minutes of your time to watch that, I guarantee it!!

Now.. chill for the evening - late afternoon flight tomorrow back to Birmingham, so maybe time for a visit to the Spa once again.. and I'll try to make a small Game Gallery of tonights game for you tomorrow as well

So we close this EuroChallenge journey with the words : THANK YOU THE FANS OF PINAR KARSIYAKA FOR A GREAT EVENING!!!!!!