Hoops grads start seasons abroad

The NBA may be cancelling games left and right, but our alumni abroad are seeing their seasons start with a mix of success and setbacks.

Chief among them is 2010-11 Penn captain Jack Eggleston, who's career began officially this week with the Bayer Giants of Leverkusen Germany. The Giants suffered a 76-60 defeat in their season opener Sunday. Eggleston, who had 7 points and five rebounds, is recovering from a pre-season ankle injury (ironic given his flawless injury record at Penn). Leverkusen plays again on Saturday.

Also across the pond, classmate Andreas Schreiber has been hard at work playing in Spain for CB Tarragona. Schreiber also opened his season Sunday with a loss, despite leading by six points with half a minute remaining. He played 25 minutes, scoring 13 points, 12 rebounds and an assist. Schreiber actually keeps a nice, detailed blog of his exploits in Spain, in which he discusses his games, seeing former Big 5 rivals and, of course, Jack Eggleston.

I have had to explain to my american teammates how the Ivy League games are back-to-back; something that I don't think any other conference experiences. The reason of course being that the ivy schools wants to limit the time away from school. If you play a lot of minutes, this means that you usually are dead tired on Sunday morning... unless you are Jack Eggleston of course.

Finally, on this side of the Atlantic, Conor Turley is already 10 games deep playing for the Pioneros de Quintana Roo in Mexico. He's averaging 5.3 points per game and shooting 70 percent from the floor. He's also started in half his games. I hope the crowd got free cheesesteaks for this one: