January 5th, 2008: St. John's at Rutgers

When Red meets Scarlet, it's easy to pick the winning color scheme Alternatively, just say you're rooting for Kia.


It's the most wonderful time of the season: my annual "well, at least the wardrobe choices are easy/oh, dear, what will I do/what was I thinking when I picked two teams from the same bleeping conference/er, go Kia!" game, Rutgers versus St. John's. It was my mom's first trip to the RAC, and I think she was impressed- as well she should be, because it's pretty impressive for a college arena- though she was more amused than intimidated by the Rutgers fight song.

The only reason there was a decent crowd, methinks, was that there was a doubleheader with the men playing Georgetown. Most Rutgers diehards would have been up in Toronto for the International Bowl or too wiped out to consider a second event in the day, while the St. John's men were hosting Cincinnati at Carnesecca. Because of the bowl game, Rutgers had the alumni band and a bare handful of unimpressive cheerleaders. Usually the Rutgers cheerleaders and dancers do some impressive gymnastic stunts, but this bunch I don't think even bothered going out to center court. At least the band didn't completely suck, although I may be inured to band suckage from St. John's.

For St. John's, it's official. I have had it the hell up to here with Monique McLean. I keep comparing her to Shameka Christon, but at least Shameka has a learning curve. Monique seems to have just barely enough of an attention span to keep focused for one game after, presumably, a very loud talking-to, and then goes and does the same damn stupid thing she wasn't supposed to do again. The problem is that because she's the first option on offense, Coach won't bench her in the middle of a game. She might lose a start, but I don't think Coach is holding her accountable for her fuck-ups, and with Kia leaving after this season, St. John's needs her to step up next year if they don't want to backslide. After the kvetching I've done early in the season, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Sky needs to shoot more. I think she's trying too hard to be a team player, and it's eating her up. If Monique's got her head up her ass and Kia's not herself, we need Sky to step up- and she can, I know she can. Kia played this game more with her heart than with her head, especially after Recee went down- that's the only explanation I can think of for her trying to go after Kia Vaughn. She was trying to force things too much, and I don't know if that was in response to the Rutgers defense, her own panic, or in response to Monique forcing the issue. Prince wasn't exactly helping, either. Tiina. Oh, Tiina. In a game against big posts like Kia Vaughn and Rashidat Junaid, St. John's needed her to be tough, because both Joy and Coco are too skinny to be really effective against big bodies, and Recee's too short. But once again, she came up too blonde and too Euro. Joy and Coco both fought, and I actually felt that Coco was more effective than Joy, although they both had their "one red jersey in three/four white ones" moment. Kelly, off the bench, didn't bring all that much. Recee played Junaid well, but then she turned one way and her knee went the other, and there's nothing quite as disconcerting as seeing a big, mean, Texas girl crying on the court. That, I think, really took the wind out of the Red Storm's sails, in that immediately after Recee was carried off the floor, they started playing as if they were going to lose the game; to me, that was one of the two momentum-switching moments that gave the game to Rutgers.

The first, of course, was Essence Carson hitting the three right before halftime to give Rutgers their first lead of the game. Though she didn't start, she played often and well. (The rumor I heard about Ajavon was that she'd missed shootaround to watch the International Bowl, which may have been stupid, but is also very sweet and romantic.) Essence stabilized the team, and that led to the second half. Brittany Ray couldn't buy a good shot in the first half, but in the second half, she found her spot and wham! Threes everywhere. Epiphanny Prince made her presence felt more on defense than on offense- so did Heather Zurich. Kia Vaughn was less effective than she could have been against a St. John's frontcourt that wasn't big enough to stop her; I felt that Rashidat took more advantage of her opportunities to go on the offensive. I really like Myia McCurdy, so you can imagine that one of my highlights was her and Joy chasing a ball out of bounds, because both of them would rather have bamboo slivers shoved under their fingernails than give up on a play.

Worst nightmare known to man: ENTERLINE. And if DeMayo and the other referee hadn't gotten control back with their whistles, there might well have been a Kia versus Kia throwdown by the end of the game. My mom was unabashedly rooting for St. John's, and the people behind us were unabashedly rooting for Rutgers, and yet on half the calls, one would turn to the other and say, "That should have been your call. My team, but bad call."

All in all, though this was a no-lose situation for a basketball fan who bleeds red, it was an extremely frustrating game. I just hope Recee's okay…