November 14th, 2008: Long Island at St. John's

St. John's Red Storm 73, Long Island Blackbirds 63

The Game Notes aren't all that fond of men's basketball, but find themselves drawn to small, spunky guards.


Because it was a doubleheader, I stayed. Figured, what the hell. First time for everything.

Very, very different atmosphere. For one thing, there actually was one. People started showing up at halftime of the women's game and kept on coming in. There was an actual student section. There's never been a student section at the women's games. I kept wanting to shake these people and ask them where the fuck they'd been, but I eventually decided that I'd rather not share my gameday experience with people who think it's appropriate to chant "Herpes" to disconcert opposing free throw shooters. Unfortunately, the tactic worked, so they kept going back to it. I admit that I was tempted to ask the young ladies behind me how they knew the VD status of an LIU player, but I felt that might be a little embarrassingly personal to inquire about.

Kyle Johnson was very impressive for LIU. If he were slightly larger- he's six-four and two hundred- he'd probably be higher up the food chain than the NEC. He put that team on his shoulders and carried them to an impressively close game. Pretty short rotation for the Blackbirds, which surprised me; I always thought the way to deal with bigger size was to wear them down with speed and a lot of subs. Then again, I'm not a coach, so what do I know? They also got solid play from Jaytorna Wisseh, another small guard, and some nice three-point shooting from Michael Culpo (you guessed it, another small guard- if there's one thing I've learned from women's basketball, it's that you don't leave the little white guard open beyond the three point arc. Considering St. John's Malik Boothe, maybe that should be expanded to the little guard, period). The Euro center, Aurimas Adomaitis, was a lot meaner than I expected from a Euro, but he's Lithuanian, and I've read that they're extremely serious about basketball, so maybe that makes a difference.

For St. John's, why have I not heard about D.J. Kennedy before? I was very impressed with him. Nice shooting. Malik Boothe's got a pretty shot, too. Both of them did a nice job of running the offense; not sure which one of them is the point guard, but maybe that's the point, no pun intended. Sean Evans is a load in the middle, daaaaaaaaaaaamn. You'd need a bulldozer to move him. I mean that as a compliment. I like big solid post players. Burrell was in the same mode. They just overwhelmed the Blackbirds. Young Mr. Mason strikes me as less physical than his father was, but he had one awesome "not in my house, bitch" block that got the crowd roaring. I like his style. The bench wasn't terribly impressive, and Paris Horne looks like he's been watching too many Becky Hammon highlight videos. I was darkly amused when he fouled out.

To be honest, I was tempted to root for LIU, being as they were underdogs and a lot of the men's St. John's fans were assholes, but then it turned out I was sitting with Victoria's family, and it would have been really tacky to root against St. John's with a Red Storm player sitting right there. Especially when said player is a post player. We do not fuck with post players.

Gary Payton was at the game, sitting behind the Red Storm bench. I'm assuming that was his stretch limo parked outside the arena after the game was finally over.

So yeah. Not doing that again. And I'm not sure exactly what makes that team worth $33 and the women's team worth $7.