Duke junior Ali Bales returns for her second guest post on the Double-A Zone. The ACC's leading shot blocker has helped lead the second-ranked Blue Devils to a 25-2 record this season.

Bales and the Blue Devils will open ACC Tournament play on Friday night against the winner of Thursday's game between Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.

Hey everybody its Ali Bales again. The last time I let you into a couple little team things; first Monique's or as our Coach G would say (Minique) true personality as well as our coach's ideas about motivation (Passion Purse).

In this blog, I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite teammates (they all are my favorites really) and that's Emily Waner who also happens to be my roommate. We are both juniors academically even though she will be here for a year longer; anyway she is a pretty amazing girl.

Even if she does ONLY buys food like lettuce, spinach, lemons, spinach and artichoke pizza, organic chicken, and all these vitamin things she mixes to make smoothies. Her idea of fast food is a quick stop at the salad bar at whole foods. Enough picking on her though, because ever since Abby (her little sister and also one of my teammates) moved in the food supply has been a little more balanced. Abby and I have much more similar tastes, i.e. more normal food.

When I say Abby moved in, I really mean it. She has a permanent bed set up in our living room. This does however double as a couch for anyone watching TV in there, but she does have first dibs on it. I like to think of our apartment as the gathering spot for our team (it helps that Jessica Foley lives right upstairs). We have had three surprise birthday parties here and I guess I am the official cake maker now (it's a wonder how good a 99 cent cake mix will taste). The bed in our living room is really a futon on the floor that has been used by the majority of our teammates whether it is a nap before class after a 6am practice or a bed for someone to use that lives far from campus, especially Mo. Of course since Mo is letting us borrow her big screen TV for the year, mainly because it is too heavy for her to get up the stairs by her apartment, of course I think that it is a really fair trade.

Besides our well visited living room, Emily and I took a special pride in making sure our rooms were homey feeling. However, there is only so much you can do with the ugly brown floors and the hair that is permanently waxed into them. Emily's room is of a classic theme, with an unbelievably inviting looking bed with lots of white and yellow pillows, a flowered matching rug on the floor and paintings on the wall. My room on the other hand is painted bright blue with a teal bed spread, white furniture and two beach puzzles on the wall. The first my sister Sarah and I did together and the second I did over the summer with all the help I could get. The only other item of mention is a lamp that I made with my dad in high school that basically looks like a basketball with a lampshade on top.

The last thing I wanted to mention is this amazing class that I am taking with Emily, Jessica, Monique, Lee Melchionni, Patrick Davidson (men's players), and a few other athletes. It is called radiology of sports injuries. When Lindsey hurt her shoulder against Maryland, we were all talking about how it could have been an anterior dislocation because those are so much more prevalent in basketball players, and how it would look on an X-ray or an MRI. Of course we turned out to be completely wrong – she had in fact just jarred it a little (after all it's not a diagnostic class).

The teacher, Nancy Major, is in fact one of the very same radiologists that look at the films of all of our injuries, so she knows A LOT about us. She is one of the most patient, interesting, and well dressed (we always compliment her outfits) teachers that I have ever had. Needless to say, while the work is not too difficult I find the material extremely fascinating.

Thanks for reading this insight into our team and again shout-out to my friends and family!