By Patrick Hayes

David Drew of the Kalamazoo Gazette has a story about the Western Michigan basketball team as it prepares to head to Europe:

The WMU men’s basketball team will embark on a 10-day trip to Europe where it will travel from Italy to France and play four exhibition games as well as spend time practicing and taking in the sites.

For (A.J.) Avery, it will be a bit surreal after growing up in the bustling city of Chicago.

“It’s very exciting,” the 6-foot-6 forward said. “Being in Chicago you don’t get to see much except violence, so going to Europe is a great vacation and I get to play basketball.”

The ‘team trip’ is one of my favorite things about following college basketball. It’s great from a team bonding perspective to experience something as cool as trip to Europe, but it’s also going to give many of the athletes on a team like Western a chance to see basketball overseas. MAC schools don’t typically send a lot of guys to the NBA, but a lot of MAC players do go on to play professionally, so hopefully getting to head to Europe will be nice exposure to countries that have pretty good basketball leagues and big fanbases.