Emma Meesseman and the Belgium women’s national basketball team will play Switzerland at 11:30 a.m. ET in Freibourg today (or Saturday). You can even live stream the game here, courtesy of FIBA’s YouTube channel.
Though most people here in the USA don’t have this game high on their radar, one familiar face does: Mike Thibault. He took a picture with his star forward during practice according to Pat Ceulemans of Het Nieuwsblad, a Belgian Dutch language newspaper:
Belgian Cats openen EK-kwalificatieronde in Fribourg https://t.co/vgtlBqUiop via @nieuwsblad_be
— Pat Ceulemans (@PatCeulemans) November 11, 2017
The Mystics GM and Head Coach regularly flies around the world to meet his players during the NBA season. And it also gives him a chance to evaluate players who he may want to bring on in future seasons, including players who never played college basketball.
Also during practice, presumably from this morning, the Belgian players took halfcourt shots with the winner getting money donated from folks in attendance. Meesseman made the shot first, so she won the money. You can watch the video from Belgian sports channel Sporza by clicking on the tweet link below. The whole thing is in Dutch, except for Marjorie Carpreaux who only speaks French apparently.
Before you freak out about watching a video mostly in a language that only people in Flanders, Suriname, and especially the Netherlands speak, you don’t need to understand Nederlands or Français to get the point.
Oh yes! The Twitter link to the video:
Emma Meesseman scoort vanaf de middellijn en wint potje van 54 euro https://t.co/8N42d55FfJ
— Pat Ceulemans (@PatCeulemans) November 11, 2017
After watching the video, since Emma doesn’t really need 54 euros, I hope she just spends it on dinner and a couple packs of Duvels for Coach T after a Belgian victory over the Swiss. After all, he was on a looooong plane ride just to see her!