Tiger Diary: Farewell, and heading back home

This is the final edition of Tiger Diary, wrapping up the Missouri men's basketball team's 10-day jaunt through Europe. Point guard Phil Pressey and UConn transfer Alex Oriakhi have been writing to us through the trip.

Well everyone, our tour is done and we finished off our last full day in Paris with another win. We are here chilling on the bus ride back from our game, which we won by 20, 81-61. The game was actually close in the fourth quarter, but we locked in and had a big run at the start of the quarter and pulled away.

My guy Alex here had another double-double and he started off strong with nine points in the first quarter alone. Both he and Earnest had double-doubles, looking here at the stat sheet, so we can definitely be a team that attacks the rim to get extra scoring chances.

Keion Bell led us with 15 and had two monster dunks. They should get up on YouTube soon, so check those out. [Ed.: the dunks are right there at the top of the post.] Both times he dunked on some dudes and it was just one of those games because they did a lot of talking and when push came to shove our big guys like Alex, Earnest and even Keion dominated the glass.

I heard we scored 21 unanswered in the fourth quarter. That's incredible. It seemed like we were creating turnovers and getting layups and then when we were in the half court guys were patient and running the offense to get easy looks.

Tonight's game was a little different than the rest because these guys were in their late 20s and early 30s. They were big and pretty athletic on the perimeter, so they had some talent. One guy was easily seven-foot tall, so it was good to dominate down low against a team that could match up with us size-wise.

It's been a great stop here in Paris. It's a beautiful city with incredible architecture and very nice people. It's crazy to think that school is just a couple days away. We get started up again on Monday and for the second time in his career Alex will be like a lost freshman wandering around campus.

I may help him out … maybe.

We leave at around 9 a.m. for the airport. I know security will take a while so we will probably have some time to shop around while we are out there. We connect through Atlanta and should get home around 11 or midnight. It's a pretty long day of travel, but I think everyone is ready to get home and get back to normal.

I was impressed with a lot of guys on the trip. I had seen Keion and Earnest in practice, but Alex really improved each game he played and his offensive confidence is really improving.

Ryan Rosburg really impressed me. He is crafty around the basket and just finds ways to contribute, even if it doesn't show up on the stat sheet. They hit a three and took the lead early in the fourth and he scored six points in a row and we never looked back.

We had a lot of fun writing about our trip and we appreciate everyone back at Missouri who helped us with this opportunity and I also want to thank Matt Norlander and Jeff Goodman for allowing us the chance to blog. [Ed.: No problem, fellas. Our pleasure.] That's about the nicest thing we will ever say about Goodman, who is not even reading these since he is on vacation again. [Ed.: You got that right.]

We hope everyone has a great weekend and we'll see you again in October! M-I-Z!!!