The University of Northern Iowa men’s basketball team under the guidance of head coach Ben
Jacobson represented the United States of America at the World University Games held in Bangkok,
Thailand, late this summer. The Panthers/Team USA came home with a 5-1 record, losing only their opening game to eventual gold medalist Lithuania.
The experience is one both Coach Jacobson and his players will remember for a lifetime. CVA met with Jacobson and four of his players – junior guard Travis Brown (TB) (Richfield, MN), senior
center Eric Coleman (EC) (Maplewood, MN), senior guard Jared Josten (JJ) (Webster City, IA) and
sophomore forward Adam Koch (AK) (Ashwaubenon, WI) to discuss their impressions of the trip.
What’s your fondest memory?
Coach - Representing the USA on behalf of our University. The tremendous responsibility and pride in wanting to represent our country to the best of our ability was an awesome feeling.
EC - Outside of basketball was going to the Grand Palace. Almost everything was made of gold.
AK - Opening ceremonies. I thought it was pretty cool how we walked in with all the other countries.
Lighting the torch was a pretty neat experience.
JJ - Playing basketball and representing the USA, something not a lot of people get to do. Playing against all different countries. Putting a USA jersey on.
Were you treated well as Americans?
Coach - We were treated very well. There was never a time where we felt uncomfortable or uneasy. The Thai people were very gracious hosts.
AK - Turkey didn’t shake our hands at the end of the game.
What’s the biggest thing you learned about Thailand or its culture?
Coach - The people are very friendly and very simple. Kim, our main
student, had never been to the mall. She is a 21-year-old medical
student. We went to the mall three times while in Thailand. It was
the only three times she had ever been there.
EC - They take their kings really serious over there.
You can’t down talk their king like you can down talk President
(George) Bush over here. They find that real offensive.
Everywhere you went there was a picture or billboard of the king
and the queen and prince. You shouldn’t stare at anyone. You have
to wait for the women to offer their hand to shake their hand.
AK - You can’t touch the top of people’s heads because that’s the most
sacred part of the body.
JJ - You can’t spit, that’s a fine. You can’t point your foot in someone’s
direction, like when you cross your legs, because that’s the lowest part of the
body. That’s considered disrespectful. There were police all over and we were
told not to make eye contact. That’s supposedly like challenging them. Not
making contact with people was hard to adjust to.
What about the accommodations?
Coach - We stayed in the Athletes Village on the campus of one of the universities. The dorm we stayed
in was nice. Set up like a regular dorm room with two sleeping rooms, a small living room area and a
bathroom to each suite. The sleeping rooms were air conditioned.
EC - There were four of us to an apartment. The beds were smaller than all of us are used to having.
How was the food?
Coach - They had the enormous task of feeding all of the athletes from each of the different
countries.The people at the cafeteria worked hard to provide good variety. However, if a person isn’t a big rice eater,
choices became a little slim during the last week.
JJ - I got tired of the food after the second day. I
missed the cheeseburgers and pizza. They had a
7-Eleven on campus that had Snickers and Gatorade.
AK - I got sick of it, too. It was a lot of rice and
chicken. There wasn’t a lot of variety.
TB - Rice, chicken and beef everyday. It always had
a spicy sauce. It was a lot better than I thought. I
ate most of the stuff. We were there so long we just
wanted some American food. The best thing you
could get from the 7-Eleven was pop and chips.
EC - You could get rice for breakfast, lunch and
dinner if you wanted. They had pancakes, but they
didn’t have syrup, so you had to find other stuff like
honey or jelly. How can you have pancakes with no
syrup? They had French toast and eggs, but their eggs
were like soup.
TB - After we won we got McDonalds.
AK - After we won again, we got to go to an Outback
Steakhouse. It was good. McDonalds had a few
different things on the menu. We got pizza one
night.
What did you learn about the other teams?
Coach - The better teams were older and very physical.
They pass the ball extremely well. The international
game is very different as it is played much more in
transition and play just doesn’t stop very often. Our
guys learned a lot from the other teams about the
international game.
TB - Internationally, like the league we were playing
in, was ages 18 to 28. It just seemed like they were
grown men out there. The whole style of play is
different, like transition and how fast you can get
points. We just had to adjust really fast.
How was the flight?
Coach - The flight to Bangkok wasn’t bad. We stayed
in San Francisco for one night which broke the trip up
nicely. From San Francisco it is eight and a half hours
to Tokyo and then five hours to Bangkok. Still a long
day, but not bad when compared to the flight home.
We were awake and traveling for about 33 hours on
the trip home! It took seven or eight days to get my
internal clock back on the central time zone.
EC - Super long. Especially for the guys who didn’t
get exit rows. Koch was stuck in the middle for about
10 hours. On the way back, we had the U.S. men’s
volleyball team and they had guys taller than us.
The bonding experience?
Coach - The time together was good for all of us. We
were able to take a couple trips – The Grand Palace,
Weekend Market – things away from basketball
that really added to the bonding experience. We
encountered a number of situations that taught us
a lot about our team. The opening loss to Lithuania,
two key injuries, five big wins in a row to finish 5-1 –
situations that bring a team together!
JJ - Everybody on the team gets along together really
well and we got to know each other even better. No TV.
Just in the lobby, but you couldn’t understand it.
How is the experience going to help once the season starts?
Coach - We were forced to deal with adversity and
I like the way we responded. Jared did a very good
job through his play of leading the team. We need
to continue to develop our leadership and chemistry.
I really like the chemistry of the team following the
summer.
EC - I think it’s going to help us a lot, especially
conditioning. We had three and a half months
working harder than we ever had before preparing
for these games. We were a faster team over there
because you were forced to play faster. That will help
us this year with the 35-second shot clock. We got
pretty used to the 24-second clock.
Feel more pressure because of the USA name?
JJ - I didn’t really feel anymore pressure. I know
America’s always been the best basketball country.
Even though we didn’t bring an all-star team over
there, I always felt like we could hold our own. I had
confidence we could win the games.
What’s the funniest thing that happened?
Coach - Watching the guys run to be first in line at
Dairy Queen! It was like they hadn’t seen a DQ in
years.
How did it feel representing the USA?
EC - You take a lot of pride in that. Not many guys
are going to do that in their lifetime. Even the guys
who play college ball or NBA ball, they’re not going
to have the opportunity to represent their country
anywhere.
What was the first food you got on the way home?
EC, TB, AK - Burger King.
JJ - I went to Dominoes.
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