This is really important to make sense of the experience and to grow from it.

We'll have opportunities to experience Appalachian culture and learn why poverty is an issue there. As I understand it, just 7,500 people live there and about 20 percent of them live below poverty level.

Once the flow of the game went through three quarters and it was nip and tuck, we knew it was going to go down to the end.

We're from Michigan. We're only excited because it's in Detroit.

We played well. We're finally starting to come together. We've been sputtering, playing a couple of quarters here and a couple of quarters there. Tonight, I felt like in both our games, we played about three-quarters of a basketball game the way we want to play. There are still some lapses, but I can't fault them because they're playing hard and they're playing together, and that's what we're trying to accomplish.

It is definitely a good and humbling experience. It really makes you appreciate being an American and having everything so easy. I had a very tough time adapting to European culture, and in general hated every minute of living overseas, but you have to accept the fact that the countries are so much older than the U.S. and that once you try to live like the people live over here, it's not so bad.