January 13th, 2009: Georgetown at St. John's

Georgetown Hoyas 64, St. John's Red Storm 48

Despair. Horror and despair. Incompetence, horror, and despair.


Jesus Hypothetical Christ. Let them have one home game without us in attendance to keep them in line, and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. And I don't think it's going to get much better from here, because KBA's teams don't deal well with losing, and there are two tough games on the road coming up. We really don't need to hang ourselves this early. Save some for later.

Whoever is convinced that this student manager can sing needs to be keelhauled. The only way his performance could be any worse was with the static that kept cutting into the song. No. Just no. Have the band do it. Have a recording do it. But stop letting that guy sing.

I think I like the direction Terri Williams-Flournoy is taking her team. Very tough defensive team, very physical, and she uses every player on her roster. She plays her matchups well, and her team stays involved in the game- you can hear her bench players calling out screens and defensive schemes. The chemistry there seems really good. One of her assistants needs to learn to shut the hell up, though. He looked and sounded like he went to the Rick Mahorn Charm School.

The one disadvantage to using everyone on the roster is that that's a lot of players to keep track of. So my impressions might be a bit vague and scattered. My most humble apologies. Karee Houlette, though, is not easy to forget, though I wish she were. What a beautiful stroke! The net barely moved on most of her shots. Krystle Hatton's one tough customer- she and Recee had some epic battles in the post, and she's one of those big players who knows she's big and loves every second of it. Jaleesa Butler's also a tough cookie, and one hell of a sixth woman. I don't know which one of them was guarding Monique, but whoever it was, she did a helluva job. I suspect that it was Monica McNutt, but my memory of the assignments is faint, and there's only so much that can be put together from play-by-play. Alexa Roche is also sticking in my mind, but I can't put my finger on why. Overall, though, that's a tall, wide, physical team that uses its size very well. And until Fuller and Butler started feasting on free throws at the end of the game, they had really good balance behind Houlette.

There's got to be something wrong with Monique. She didn't look like herself at all. Slow, hesitant, awkward, overwhelmed- I could go on, but I'd rather not. And that really sums up how most of the team played. Joy is very obviously still hurtin', and I think that affects the team's morale. Sky was awful, and Kelly was even worse. Off the bench, Coco was nothing, and while Recee showed signs of her old Texas badass nature, she got hit with some bullshit fouls that really limited how effective she could be. The only two that made me happy in any way, shape, or form were the two freshmen, Da'Shena and Britney. Da'Shena couldn't get her shots to go in, but at least she followed them. Britney ball-hawked really well and didn't play too badly on the offensive side of the ball, but she's got to learn to speed up her game. I've been told she's not very outgoing, and if she's going to be a point guard in the BEast, she's going to have to get over that extremely quickly. You ned to have big brass ones to survive, plain and simple.

Inconsistently refereed game, and we had Dee friggin' Kantner as one of our refs, so I give up all hope now. The other female ref, Aliberti, seemed to have it in for Recee- she called two consecutive bullshit fouls on her. It got out of hand pretty quickly by the end of the game, and I genuinely thought there was going to be a fight.

These notes are short because I'm extremely glad the game is over. I don't want to think about it anymore. I don't want to think about the road games. And under no circumstances do I want to think that this team won't get its collective head out of its collective butt until Joy's better.