December 30th, 2007: Morgan State at St. John's

After profanity, a respite, as Kia Wright brings the three-ball and Sheree Ledbetter brings the spark.


Now that's more like it. Astute readers of the game notes of doom- such as you are- might have observed that there were no game notes for Baylor's visit to St. John's, despite this being one of the most anticipated out-of-conference games of the year for the Red Storm. I was too furious at the team to write game notes, because they flat-out gave up, and that was unacceptable. But I'm back in the saddle, and today they looked like Coach read them the riot act… and then Kia and Joy read it to them again with a few curse words thrown in for good measure.

Some kind of kids day today. There were hyperactive crotchdroppings running around everywhere, and inattentive parents to go with them. We had trouble getting our regular seats, or the seats we were planning to make our regular seats (we met Kia's grandma at the Baylor game, and had planned to sit with her, but there were strangers in said seats). I don't want to say there was a bunch of cluelessness in the arena, but one of the people in my row asked me if sophomore forward Victoria Hodges, who's been in street clothes and on crutches pretty much since she set foot on campus, was the coach.

Girl Scout choral anthem. It didn't suck. For St. John's, this is noteworthy.

Morgan State has hooded warm-ups. That's kind of awesome. They play with a lot of intensity, something that I'm sure comes from their coach, who reminds me a lot of the guy from Heart of the Game. A lot of ballhawking guards, a lot of physical posts. If they had only been half as sloppy, they might have made this a game instead of a blowout. Corin Adams impressed both me and my mom- she's got a lot of nice moves and knows how to move on the floor, and as a sophomore, there's plenty of room for her to improve as well. The other big scorer for them this game was Aaries Reed. We found ourselves very fond of Tamara Rogers- mom called her a firecracker, and she played with equal passion at both ends of the floor. Britney Griffin reminded us both of Natalie Williams, at least in her build, but her touch was a little softer and her skillset much less impressive.

Lord, but Kia wanted this game. At one point, I was actually yelling that she couldn't hit any more threes, damnit, because I didn't have any more room to put them on my scoresheet- she finished with six, and the scoresheet only has seven. Her hands were pretty quick, too, and she fought for rebounds like you wouldn't believe from her size. I think she was pissed from the Baylor game. Joy was also back to her old self, though with a couple of lapses in concentration. It was nice to hear her voice on the floor again, I'll say that. Monique brought her game, though there were a couple of moments when she probably should have passed but didn't. Kelly started in her place- methinks Coach is NOT happy with Little Sista. Then again, there were way too many possessions, especially in the second half, where St. John's spent too much time passing around, either because they were trying to force-feed scoreless players, because they were working the clock, or because no one wanted to help run up the score. Tiina was completely out of it in the first half, but turned it up in the second- she was the catalyst that reminded the team that the game wasn't officially over yet. Kelly hit the shots she was given- I don't think she was asked to do more than that. I felt we got some great play off the bench, especially from Coco, and from Sheree, who had to come in when Recee got into quick foul trouble. The more I see of Sheree, the more I like her as Recee's backup when Tiina graduates- yeah, she's small, but she plays tough. I think she just needs more time to get accustomed to being on the floor. The only one we weren't really happy with was Kristin, who seemed to think that being part of the mop-up crew meant she didn't have to take the game seriously. Uh-uh.

Hopefully, we didn't use up all our shooting mojo in this game. We're going to need a lot more like this if we're going to look respectable against Rutgers. Ah well. Can't wait. May the best team that night win, that's all I have to say on that.