November 25th, 2008: Army at St. John's

http://redstormsports.cstv.com/sports/w-baskbl/stats/2008-2009/stj04.html

don't ask. Don't even ask. And this is coming from a fan of the winning team...


I genuinely have no idea how we managed to win this game. I mean it. We shot horribly from the field and almost as badly from the line. We couldn't take care of the ball. We were outrebounded. We just managed to play a team that really couldn't hold on to the ball. It was, beyond a doubt, one of the most depressing games I've ever been to.

Part of that came from the setting. We only got a few days' notice that game time had been changed from 7PM to 3:30- it seemed that St. John's had won a host bid for consolation rounds of the men's NIT, and the fact that the arena was already booked didn't seem to matter to them. St. John's doesn't get much of a crowd anyway, but the official attendance was 122. We couldn't even get enough cheerleaders or dancers together for them to do any routines. We didn't have the band. It was like something out of a nightmare. It's probably for the best that there weren't a lot of people there, because it wasn't a very good game.

Dear Coach Magarity, please take better care of your health. You're going to hurt yourself if you keep yelling like that. I liked what I saw out of Megan Evans- I think I remember her from the Maggie Dixon game last year. And Erin Anthony probably would have gotten more involved if she hadn't had the foul trouble- most of Army's key players got into foul trouble, which is really what screwed them in the end. Laura Baranek hit a couple of unbelievable bank shots, though one of them was after the shot clock had expired and shouldn't have counted. I really liked Courtney Wright, but I can't put my finger on why, and writing these notes several days later certainly isn't helping that. She hustled. Naliki Hawkins was a sneaky little thing with really good hands.

I don't think we'd have been able to pull that game out if Kelly hadn't been shooting so well from beyond the arc. Some of those threes were from the men's range. Da'Shena really couldn't get going, although she has a nose for the ball on the offensive glass the same way Joy and Coco do, as if it wasn't already obvious what Coach likes in her post players. Sky's shooting woes continue, but she had a really nice rebound sometime in the first half. Monique couldn't hit the broad side of a barn- Army was marking her really well and daring everyone else to score. Forcing the ball inside, while it didn't always work out, got Joy, Da'Shena, and Coco to the line a lot once the bigs for Army were in foul trouble. Coach experimented some more with Sky at the two, bringing in both Kristin and Britney for looks. Kristin was unremarkable, Britney made freshman mistakes. Aricia started to wake up a little bit.

I think I managed to guilt people into using the student sections behind the baskets. At one point, to distract Megan Evans at the line, I yelled, "Just let yourself be disconcerted by the imaginary students!" A few minutes later, the cluster of guys who had been sitting in the section next to mine moved into the student section behind the Army basket and proceeded to help disconcert the Black Knights on offense, and they migrated at halftime so that they could do the same in the second half. They were hysterical, and they kept it clean and, for the most part, polite. It was awesome. It gave the game a little tiny bit of that collegiate atmosphere that I find myself missing at St. John's games.

I had the displeasure of sitting near one of the loudest and most obnoxious fans I've ever encountered, and that's pretty impressive. I don't mind noise. I don't mind yelling. I'd be a hypocrite if I did. But you really shouldn't be trying to get a player's attention for real. Unfortunately, I have the horrible feeling he was Sky Lindsay's dad. For future reference, Sky? Feel free to ignore orders barked from the stands. You're a BEastie now; your orders come from the bench. Most of us aren't really trying to talk to you, we're just venting frustration.

It'll be interesting to compare this game to the Maggie Dixon game in December, seeing how Army develops in the next couple of weeks and how they fare against a more talented but less experienced opponent than St. John's.