January 19th, 2008: West Virginia at St. John's

Olayinka Sanni is a total bad-ass, Mike Carey outwits Kim barnes Arico, and most of the Red Storm don't even seem to have gotten out of bed.


Dear Team: Please stop sucking ass, okay? Love, one of your long-suffering fans. PS- No, seriously, if you're going to suck ass, at least do so with some spirit.

I'm starting to think our band is a metaphor for our team. There's one soloist who blows his little heart out to try and make the anthem sound passable, but the rest of his ensemble wouldn't know a sharp from a flat if it poked them, so he tries harder and harder and ends up making a fool out of himself. Now, replace soloist with Kia Wright, replace the rest of the ensemble with the rest of the team, and replace a passable rendition of the national anthem with a passable imitation of a basketball game. This is beginning to become a problem for the Red Storm.

Is it just me, or does the West Virginia coach remind anyone of an evil version of Dan Hughes? They look very similar, but Carey's demeanor is much more reminiscent of a cranky Bill Laimbeer. And seriously, dude, there's no reason to bring two starters back out onto the floor with a twenty point lead at the three-minute mark. There really isn't. That being said, I think Carey outcoached Barnes Arico today, and there aren't too many folks in the Big East who do that on a regular basis. Of course, it helps to be able to call upon a six-two center who isn't afraid to be a big girl, in the person of Olayinka Sanni, who reminded me and my mom very much of Kym Hampton in her build and in the way she used that build to muscle her way through the lane and make life a living hell for Joy and Coco. I'd have to see her against real posts in this conference to judge, but she looks like she'd be a good pickup in the draft- not for the Libkids, because we have post players coming out our ears, but for some team that needs young post help and is willing to take a flyer on a project. Meg Bulger had a relatively quiet game, which wasn't helped by the two quick fouls she picked up at the very end of the first half, when St. John's really looked like they were going to make a game of this by making two quick steals in the backcourt and getting fouled on both of them. Chakhia Cole was tough, but as a five-ten four, in an era when the short but tough fours are being phased out of the league, she's not going to go anywhere except Europe. LaQuita Owens was a pretty impressive shooter- after she canned her third 3, I suggested from the stands that perhaps Kelly might want to effin' guard her, if that was okay with her.

My team, let me show you its humiliation. I was furious with most of them for most of the game. About the only ones I think left it all out there, or at least left more out there than they left elsewhere, were Kia and Joy. Kia was all up in everyone's business today, and Joy was working hard out there, between her work as the garbage woman and trying to defend either Cole or Sanni, depending on the assignment. More on why this was a bad idea in a bit. But the rest of them… Sky's playing very tentatively, and she's shown before that she can handle D-I players, so I don't know why she's suddenly being so hesitant. Tiina has never been blonder, both in hair color and in personality on the court. So many times today she just stood there and watched balls go by her. I mean, I know she's a Euro, but this is beyond ridiculous. Monique couldn't throw it in the ocean, not that she didn't try. She's taking the shots that Sky should be taking, the shots that I'm starting to think Sky needs to get her feet under her so she can turn into the top-notch player we know she can be. Kelly took a lot of chances, some of which worked, some of which didn't, and she wasn't nearly aggressive enough on offense- she's got to learn to drive when she has the ball and not just settle for a jump shot; since she's a junior, it might be too late for her to learn to do that consistently. Coco wasn't quite herself today, although I'd credit Sanni with that as much as I'd blame Coco for it. Recee, I think, was scared after her knee, because she played very tentatively, and Recee and tentative don't usually go together unless the words "not in a million years" are also included in the sentence. Whatever the reason was, she was not being bad-ass enough to go up against Sanni, which meant that we really had no one to counter the bad-ass (and the ass, for that matter) that Sanni brought to the game.

I was really not happy with Coach tonight. Kia on Bulger was asking for trouble; I would have switched her over to Cole and put Joy on Bulger to try and get a better matchup. Of course, the whole thing would have become moot once Sanni started going off, because Joy would have had to focus on her, but I don't like the way the game was managed at all- because Coach let the players get out of control. I'd like to think she's not throwing in the towel on Kia's senior year, because I'd lose a lot of respect for her if she were, but I can't think of a reason not to call timeouts that she had in hand in order to- if necessary- grab Sky and/or Monique and/or Tiina and/or Kelly by the jerseys and yell, "CALM THE HELL DOWN RIGHT THIS SECOND!" I think part of Coach's problem is that she gets too involved in the "fairness" of the game- if the refs are giving her team shit, then she gets caught up in it. It's the same problem Kia has. Unfortunately, and I don't necessarily want to buy into a stereotype here, Coach is also in a physical and emotional state where she overreacts to things. But once she and Kia both get out of control and start getting on the refs, then the rest of the team loses it, and we get our doors blown off like a little old lady at a chili cookoff.

I was also not happy with the refs tonight, because the one problem I had with Sanni was that she was pretty blatantly using her ass as a battering ram and doing a bunch of holding. Honestly, I don't care if refs call a game tight or loose, as long as they do it consistently and at both ends, and Barb Smith's crew was doing no such thing.

Even the Let's Make a Deal sucked. I told her not to take the box, damnit. I told her. The box was good last time, and they alternate it. So instead of getting a nice jacket and shirt… she got a cupcake. This is the BEast. There are no cupcakes. Except Georgetown.

Today was also the alumnae game, but I was too cheap to go. We did see Greeba Barlow (who was in training camp with the Sparks last year) and Mercedes Dukes wandering around. Hopefully, they were slated to host a postgame clinic on badassery, because this current team needs a very large kick in the ass, and if anyone's going to give it to them, it's going to be Greeba Barlow.

One last thing before I go, and I know it's not a polite observation to make, but naming your daughter Sparkle actually tells the world, "You know, I didn't want a kid. I really wanted a My Little Pony."