December 28th, 2008: James Madison at St. Francis (NY)

James Madison Dukes 72, St.Francis College Terriers 53

The Game Notes are really and truly unimpressed with St. Francis in all aspects.


I've seen bad basketball games, and I've seen bad basketball players, and I've seen bad basketball teams, but I swear on my life and honor, the Terriers of St. Francis College manage to combine aspects of all of those into a cacophonous whole. Division I basketball: UR DOIN IT WRONG.

I'm pretty sure I've actually heard this guy do the anthem before, at one of the LIU doubleheaders. It's still "the" bombs, not "those" bombs.

If Dawn Evans is 5'7", I'm a power forward. She's 5'5" at most and slightly built. A nice little guard with nice little moves, but unless she bulks up somewhat in the next couple of years, she'll just be another collegiate scorer who can't take her game to the next level. Of course, it may have been that the Dukes didn't need her to step up, and maybe there's another gear to her game that I haven't gotten the opportunity to see, but she seems to be a volume scorer, not an efficient one. James Madison has a lot of good size, and unlike a lot of the teams I've seen this year, they actually know how to use it; most of their bigs were heavily involved in both offense and defense. They got great play off their bench, especially from Lauren Jimenez and Brittany Crowell. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that Jimenez was usually the starter and got benched for this game for some infraction of team rules or something- she's got good size, and I like posts who aren't afraid to get physical. The unfortunate thing that caught my eye about Kisha Stokes was her gods-awful jump shot, but looking at the box score suggests other reasons why she might be in the starting lineup, and given that Evans does average something like 24 ppg, I can see Brooks having the flexibility to put someone in the starting lineup who does the less tangible things. I really liked how JMU's coach used his bench- everyone got into the game, and almost everyone actually got into the game before it was actually garbage time. That might have been what allowed them to rebound as well as they did, too, because they completely owned the boards; forget second chances, they were getting fourth and fifth chances, and if they'd converted a couple of more of those, they would have won by 40.

I don't even know where to begin with St. Francis, I honestly don't. For a school that employs two All-Star posts, they have truly craptastic rebounding and boxing out. You can almost tell looking at Kendra Williams that she understands the moves with her head, but that she's thinking too much. She moves ponderously and telegraphs every move on offense to the point, not to mention that she does't shoot when she has a good opening. I do like her defensive instincts, though. Kara Ayers seems to be a good slashing guard, though she has too much of a tendency to throw up a shot and trust that the referee will actually call the foul- that might be a tenable strategy in men's basketball, but in women's, I'm not so sure. And then there are the shots that neither have a chance of going in nor had any illegal contact- she just got a little wild and a little crazy. Not my type of player, but I really don't want to think about what St. Francis would look like without her. They didn't get much from the rest of their starters, either. Or from much of anybody. There's something I like about Vianca Tejada, but I can't put my finger on it, and it certainly doesn't show up in the boxscore. She just always seemed to be involved in the play. Coach Milano did discover that lightning doesn't strike twice; Shannon Gantt was big against Albany, but she was a hot mess against James Madison- undisciplined and much lacking in clues.

Play of the game: early in the second half, James Madison misses a shot. Sarah Williams neatly tips the rebound to Jalissa Taylor, who puts it in for two. In the official play by play, Williams never touched the ball, but rest assured, she tapped it over like she was born to the touch pass.

Unremarkable referees. Some bad calls, some missed calls, one clock malfunction, but both teams did keep them busy. And if they'd called more than they had, I might actually have left early, and I don't do that. At all.

I do like watching Sue coach, though. (Kym's still on the roster in the program, but I saw neither hide nor hair of her at the actual game, unless she's shrunk about a foot and a half and really butched out.) She does her fair share of the yelling, and she seems to be the good cop to Milano's bad cop, the one who's friendlier with the players, even if she does impart the same lessons. Of course, Sue being Sue meant that while everyone else engaged in the traditional method of clapping to keep rhythm during intros (clap-clap clap, clap-clap clap), her "clap" might be putting her hand out like she was going to either high five someone or start a round of "Miss Mary Mack". Or it might be a foot clap. All of this with a very serious look on her face. Fortunately, unlike the ass-kicking we attended last year, no chairs were harmed in the making of this defeat.

The official attendance was 104. Of that, I think about 70 to 80 were friends and family of Stokes and Jimenez for the Dukes, or JMU fans in general- I was sitting behind someone I can only assume was part of Jimenez's posse, given his encouragement of her. Terrier guard Kristen Miah brought family (her mom had a homemade "Kristen's Mom" jersey with Miah's number on the back). A couple of people were there because they knew someone on the coaching staff. There were a few actual St. Francis fans. And then there was me, just a basketball junkie with a clipboard, delivering acid comments about both teams to anyone who would listen.

How do I know there were people who were just there because they knew someone on the coaching staff? No, I wasn't playing the social butterfly, but for the life of me, I can't think of any other reason Becky Hammon and a couple of friends would show up at St. Francis, can you? Yeah, I wasn't exactly expecting her either, but there I was, watching the warm-ups and despairing at the form of the Terriers' jumpshots, and this blonde with a bottle of water and a hint of brown roots came by, and I whipped my head around so hard I think I still have whiplash. "Wait a minute, that looks like… but what the hell… yeah, I guess it makes sense, but seriously, why would she… no, that's definitely her, I'd recognize those eyebrows anywhere." She was surprisingly undisturbed throughout the game, so either she's done this before or no one knew who the heck she was.

This one I'm not so certain about, but there was someone over on that side of the court who looked a lot like Epiphanny Prince, and RU didn't have a game today, and Stokes for James Madison is a Bergtraum alumna. Definitely makes it possible, but I didn't get a good look and I wasn't about to shove my way through to see.

The fact that I just spent two paragraphs describing stargazing in the crowd might suggest to you that the quality of the game was nothing to write home about.

I don't want to say that space and facilities are limited at St. Francis, but the Dukes spent the first half of halftime stretching out and drinking their water/Gatorade/whatthefrigever in the endcourt, just out of bounds, before wandering off to I know not where for their talk. Honestly, I go to a St. Francis game, and it's like stepping into a time machine, and not in a good way; I half expect that the next time I go, it'll be six-on-six and no one's allowed to cross halfcourt.