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

St. John's Red Storm 70, Northeastern Huskies 52

Joy McCorvey and Coco Hart kick ass, Jasmine Crew has some moves, and the Game Notes of Doom do not appreciate men's prices.


Home openers make me happy. Most of the time. I wasn't as thrilled about this one as I should have been. I didn't like having to pay extra because it was a doubleheader with the men (fortunately, a kind soul in the ticket office sold me a student ticket, so I only paid twice as much as I normally do instead of eight times as much). I'd like to know when we're putting something up about last season's WNIT run. Little things like that.

Dear Mr. Manager person, please don't fuck up the lyrics to the National Anthem. I'm not sure if I should be grateful someone corrected you by the time you tortured it for the men's game, or angry that you didn't go to the trouble to get it right for the team you actually work for.

Northeastern came in not having a lot of size, and I think they realized they really weren't going to get too far if they tried to push it inside, so they played dogged defense and tried to feed off the energy from the obscenely large percentage of the crowd that was theirs. (Having three New Yorkers, four Jersey girls, and two Nutmeggers allows for a helluva lot of family. Compare to St. John's.) Jasmine Crew has a nice set of moves- if she'd been able to finish them, she might be further up the food chain than the America East. Kim Carr played well, and I think her fourth foul was critical for the Huskies. Tenacious play from their small guards, especially Iervolino and Conroy. Kendra Walton came on later in the game- nine of her thirteen were in the second half. They were just overmatched on both ends of the floor.

It's rare for St. John's to have a size advantage on an opponent, and they took full advantage of it inside. Joy McCorvey and Coco Hart both went to town on the smaller Huskies. The boxscore might show Northeastern with more points in the paint, but I suspect the number would go up if you included free throws resulting from plays in the paint (and up even further if Joy and Da'Shena could hit their free throws). Monique took the shots she needed to take, and both she and Da'Shena did a great job of getting to the line. Sky is still shaky at the point, but she almost has to play the position both because she's the best of the available options and because she can't be a shooter if she doesn't start working on her shot- she still has no spin, which means she gets no help from the rim, which means that 3-9 is actually a pretty good shooting night for her. Kelly was relatively quiet, but she did what we needed her to do- hit threes, hit her free throws, and not fuck up too horribly at the other end of the floor. Didn't see any of her trademark sideline/endline plays, though, but the season is still young. Aricia was less than unimpressive- she was flat-out awful. She appears to have misplaced her cojones. Now, again, the season is still young, and I'm sure she'll pull it together, but we need her to step up big in the wake of Tiina Sten's graduation. Even with Da'Shena playing over her head, our post depth is not so great that we can afford to have Aricia fall off the face of the earth. Sheree and Victoria both played briefly. Sheree was unimpressive, and Victoria only got thirty seconds- but hey, she got on the court in a game that counts for the standings for the first time in three seasons, so, y'know, baby steps and alla that.

Elón continues to style. If we have to have a player in street clothes, at least we can have one who knows how to dress. I love my team, but some of them come from the DeTrina White "I Only Need Two Nice Shirts" school of fashion.

Refereeing was unmemorable. Always a plus.

The giveaway keychain schedules are AWESOME. SO MUCH AWESOME. I now have the home schedule on my keys!

In conclusion: yay Joy!