May 20th, 2006: New York at Connecticut

Connecticut Sun 91, New York Liberty 74

Foolishly, the Game Notes hit the road, banner raisings are way way cool, the Liberty have some flaws, and Patty Coyle has no love for rookies.


So after being certain that common sense would prevail and yours truly would be watching the Liberty's opener on my laptop, my honey and I ended up heading to Connecticut after all. I forgot how much I like Mohegan Sun… and how much I don't like their security procedures, or their lack of roster cards. For some reason there's almost always trouble with roster cards when I go there.

Good crowd; the boxscore later showed it at over 8000, though there were probably empty seats counted as present folk. Loud crowd, too. Some of them were a bit snarky, but in their defense, we were rather disruptive.

Lousy anthem. Javier or Xavier or however you spell it, stick to the guitar; at least that didn't sound too awful. At least he didn't muff the words, because that's inexcusable when they're on the video board.

Banner raisings are awesome. Everyone should have a chance to see one. Of course, it's highly preferable that the banner being raised belongs to your team, but even if it doesn't, it's something that needs to be checked out. I think the fireworks were a little over the top, though. Just a thought.

The other thing I like about openers is that everyone gets introduced. The Sun got introduced with little jets of flame- or not so little, for the starters. I was certain something was going to go catastrophically wrong and we'd have flambéed Sun (or possibly referee flambé, since Enterline was there), but nothing happened, and they managed to get the flame-spurting thing out of the way safely.

The quarter thing seems to be working well for the Sun. They came off today as a very poised, polished team. I saw a lot of plays that got disrupted end well for Connecticut because Taj or Katie Douglas or someone made the diving play and got the pass off or got the putback or got the rebound or *something* that they were supposed to do. Very smart team, and they seem to have become more aware of the shot clock- the only 24-second violation in the game belonged to the Liberty (and there were some New York plays where heaves went up because no one had kept track of the damn clock, but we'll be getting to that in the Liberty section of the notes).

Where do I even begin? Keesh was cool (and slick- she had a very nifty pick). Katie Douglas should never be left open, even if you don't have the personnel to handle a guard of her size, and she continues her solid defensive play. Dydek is still not someone you should try to shoot over. (I'm looking at you, Barbara.) Taj, while she needs to lose the pigtails STAT, remains a fearsome force on the inside, and Asjha Jones is learning well from her. The bench for the Sun also showed me something, especially Erin Phillips and Megan Mahoney- can we trade Erins with y'all, and I loved Mahoney's shooting. Didn't see a lot of Carey, which might have been a good idea on Coach T's part. I really do like the way he works.

Becky hit a couple of circus shots- a shot-clock-beating heave that went off the back of the iron and the glass in some order and then fell in comes to mind- but once she started hitting those, she started thinking she could hit everything, and well, no. Shameka had one of those games where her outside shooting was on, and it was pretty- but can she keep it up? She also led the team in rebounding. Schuey really needs to get shooting lessons of some sort- 1-9 and 3-8 do NOT work for a post player. Cathrine has added the Glare of Death to her collection, as an accompaniment to her Screen of Death, and at one point she directed it at Carey, hence why it was a good idea for Carey not to get too much playing time. Cat also committed a lot of fouls, a couple questionable and one just plain stupid, and hit late threes. I can barely remember that Barbara played, which is generally not a good sign when it comes to your starters. Ashley brought the D- she might be the only player we have who can guard the big guards, which is not good when the big guards are the new trend. That's part of the problem, our entire backcourt is either short, slight, or both. I honestly don't know why Kiesha Brown is active, unless it's for those interceptions, and if that were the case, she should just sign with the Jets and have done with it, because Emilie would be a lot more useful right now.

The problem with writing the game notes twelve hours later is that it's hard to remember the plays. Let's just pretend we all saw the highlight reels.

The worrisome thing comes from postgame. Hanging out after the game, we spotted Coach Coyle coming out of the arena. While I attempted to keep from impaling her on my retractable Sharpie, Glenn got her to sign his jersey and commented that the kids played well (which they kinda did, at least compared to the brain farts some of our veterans had). Her response? "Yeah, but we made a lot of mistakes." (emphasis mine) Uh, hello, lady, those "kids" are also part of your team.

I can't say yet that I'm sticking to my predictions, because I haven't seen Washington, but Connecticut looks like they have all the pieces for another run at the big prize. And if New York can't pull it together, then I at least want to see the other bridesmaid get it.