Conor Morgan, Joventut: 'We like our chances'

Conor Morgan of Joventut Badalona introduces himself to fans and discusses his team's season in his first EuroCupBasketball.com blog post.

One of Joventut Badalona's top players over the last two seasons has been forward Conor Morgan. Morgan grew up in Canada and played college basketball there before starting his professional basketball career in New Zealand. Since he joined Joventut, Morgan has continued to develop as a player on one of the most exciting clubs in Europe due to its unique basketball philosophy and focus on young talents. In this EuroCupBasketball.com blog, Morgan is going to keep fans updated about Joventut's progress in the competition as the club tries to conquer its second EuroCup title as well as about his life in Badalona.

Hello, I am Conor Morgan and play for Joventut Badalona. I was born in Victoria, Canada, and played college basketball in Vancouver. Canadian basketball, as a whole, is definitely on the rise. In the last couple of years, we have had a lot more NBA success, but alongside that, we've had a lot of European success as well, with a lot of Canadians playing in some of the top leagues in Europe - in Germany, France and Spain, even Russia. We have a lot of guys everywhere. So it's been great and personally, I've definitely had an interesting path to where I am now.

When I came out of high school, I was pretty light, I was pretty skinny. I was not really a highly touted recruit out of high school. The way I would describe myself coming out of high school, I was still kind of waiting to grow into my body. I had a lot of potential and I ended up going to a Canadian college, UBC - the University of British Columbia. I committed to work on myself, my body, and get as good a basketball as I could. I didn't know where it would lead me or anything, but I hoped that I had a bright future from what people were telling me. And I hoped that I could work as hard as I could to get to the best situation.

"The philosophy of Joventut is developing players and they are quite literally a basketball factory."

I couldn't have told you that I would have ended up coming straight from Canada to the ACB in the next year and I'm very grateful for Joventut taking a chance on me. Jordi Marti and Carles Duran took a chance on me and I think I was able to capitalize on that opportunity in my first year here. I don't think another Canadian player from that league has come directly to the ACB, so I'm very proud of that accomplishment. I think overall, it was the work of Jordi and Carles and I'm forever grateful to them for taking a chance on a kid that they probably saw on film maybe five or six times and they thought "wow, this kid's got potential". I'd like to think it's worked out on both sides. I love it here and I think they definitely like having me on the team.

I played in New Zealand before joining Joventut. What happened there was I was down at the Commonwealth Games with Team Canada in college. It was in Australia. It was like more of a summer league. I think it was two and a half months or so and it was the summer in between the European season. It allowed me to play against pros and get a little bit accustomed to professional basketball. And it was a great part of the world, I have some great memories and good friends down there. It was a great little stopover for me before I came to Europe. That was always the end goal: to get over here. But it was a great stopover I had down there for a couple of months.

We have been really solid at home in the EuroCup, losing only once at Palau Olimpic in the last two seasons. Of course, if you don't win on the road, you cannot really win more than half of your games. We did that last season; we lost all of our road games and won our home games. I think the biggest improvement we made this year as a team, and it's just kind of our cohesiveness from last year, bringing in guys like Ante Tomic, then Ferran Bassas and Pau Ribas coming back, and even Vlady Brodzianskiy. They are all great guys and just to have those guys in and out every day, it is very easy to be a good player on a good team when everybody gets along and the coaching staff really enjoys coaching us. So I think, all in all, it's just a very positive environment that we have going right now and we've got to keep that going through the highs and lows of the season.

This is a very special club, too. The philosophy of Joventut is developing players and they are quite literally a basketball factory. There are some kids who come to practice who are 17, 18, 19 years old and are light years ahead of where I was at that age. It's just amazing that this kind of basketball, this kind of club exists. I try to tell people back in Canada how talented some of these young kids are over here, but you don't really understand it until you come and see it. But that's definitely a thing that Penya and Joventut really pride themselves on, developing the younger guys.

"It is a very physical, very talented Top 16 group."

I think, honestly, that's another reason we've had such great success, too. So many of the young guys have been in the system and they play the Penya style of basketball. They really know they get developed and nurtured throughout this process of growing older. And I think a lot of the guys like Xabi, Neno, Arturs Zagars and Parra, for example, are growing into the roles. As they grow in a positive environment, there's more success in the team as guys get older - and me, for example, as well. I came here when I was 24 and that's relatively young and I had coaching every day. They really helped me get through the psychological things, helped me get through the skill-based things, the physical things with the strength coach... I really couldn't be in a better situation coming out of university as a 24-year-old kid coming to this country and this city, just developing into the player that I am today for sure. It has helped me a lot.

We have played against every opponent in our Top 16 group. At this point, you are not going to have a bad team, and I think Unicaja, at the beginning, they were in a little bit of a drought. They were in a little bit of a changeover. They even changed coaches last week. They are a very good, very talented team, but I think they are just kind of figuring out how to play together. And then we got Monaco and Nanterre, two very physical teams. Nanterre has really good guards, long, very good athletes. And Monaco is not the tallest team, but they are very, very physical on the glass. They love to get offensive rebounds. On and on, I would say it is a very physical, very talented Top 16 group. We have a lot of respect for all three of our opponents. And I think going into every game, if we keep that respect level there and we play hard, I think we can be very successful in the second half of the Top 16.

We qualify for the playoffs with a win in Monaco. Obviously, we all want to win that game, but at the same time, even if we lose that game, we can win the next two and be first and that would be good as well. I mean, we're just really focused on doing our things, as a team, and trying to do them at the right moment of the season. At the same time, we want to be dominant. We want to be one of the best teams in the group, that's our motivation: to win the group. And all in all, we like our chances of trying to take a run at the EuroCup trophy as well. So obviously, we would love to win that game. However, if for some reason we don't, we are just going to move forward and try to focus on things that we can control, like our defense. Our defense right now is one of our main focuses. So if we can just work on those things and do our things well, that's something that we really pride ourselves on as a team.

Visca la Penya!