February 1st, 2009: Marist at Iona

Marist Red Foxes 69, Iona Gaels 60

The Game Notes of Doom take in a classic clash of MAAC teams, and come away quite impressed with Rachele Fitz- and with the Iona Gaels' style.


All right. Now this is how you do it right, as compared to St. John's, where the ultimate goal seems to be finding out how wrong they can do it. Hold your heads up, Iona, if you aren't already. This is a reloading year, not a rebuilding year.

Iona has a very lovely campus, surprisingly old-fashioned for a school that was founded in 1940. So far, it's the only one I've been to that you really do need to grab a taxi to get to from the nearest train, though there's a bus that runs once every blue moon. And the arena is very nice, with a few practical amenities I could wish for BCS facilities. The auxiliary stat board, for one thing; throughout the game, it showed all the basic stats. I want one for Christmas. I'd also like a scoreboard team that actually uses the graphics panel on the main scoreboard for topical graphics and salient statistics for players at the line.

Signs you might have arrived at the game a little earlier than you should: the taxi you're in cuts off the road team's bus on the way there. Also, while you're waiting for the ticket office to open, Brian Giorgis wanders by, worrying that the bus driver has left because he had a card in the bus for someone.

Iona takes their team colors very seriously. Everything there is maroon and gold, except for the dance team- they wear gold with black pants in order to differentiate themselves from the cheerleaders. Bonus points for putting netting over the pipes on the ceiling. I can't believe none of the other arenas I've been to have done this. Such a simple precaution...

They does their introductions very snazzily- though I don't think they can actually shut the lights, they dim them, and the dance team goes into the stands and shakes their collective moneymaker. It's very professional-level. Hell, except for the Unfortunate Implications of having an all-female dance team performing to "Dude Looks Like a Lady", Iona puts together a better show than the BEast schools I visit on a regular basis. A PA announcer with a smooth voice, a kickin' sound system with great taste in music... if it weren't for the $12 train fare, I might shift conferences and become a MAAC momma.

Good fucking Lord, Rachele Fitz. She doesn't quit. And she seemed to love my camera; every time I took a picture of her taking a shot, she made it. I know she's more of a power forward at this level, but I think she's got the skillset to make the transition to the three in the pros. Not a great game for Viani, but since Iona predicated their first line of defense on getting the ball out of her hands as soon as possible, I can't really judge her. Maria Laterza's got good size, but she makes mistakes she shouldn't be making in the second half of sophomore year. She started, but Brandy Gang played more minutes and made more of an impact- she had one great block in the second half, and like many of her teammates, spent a lot of time diving on the floor. Allenspach seemed scared to shoot the long ball for some reason, even though she had quite a few open looks; only in the second half did she start taking those shots- and hitting them. I liked what I saw out of reserve Corielle Yarde, though that's one of those things I can't put my finger on. Marist's shooting, especially in the first half, sealed this win; you hit more than half your shots in the first half, and you get to the line often enough, you're going to pull most games out no matter how many times you turn the ball over.

Because Marist got turned over a lot. Give credit to Iona- they play one hell of a defense. They keyed in on Viani and Fitz, and for a while it worked. Then Fitz started really getting loose, and it was downhill from there. But their guard corps swarmed Viani, with Kristina Ford, Naeemah Ricketts, and Marissa Flagg all taking turns at her. Ricketts and Flagg were especially tough on her, and Ricketts runs a mean fast break. This game might have been a lot different if Kristina Ford had been able to hit the broad side of a barn; she finished 2/19 from the field, and a lot of those shots were very difficult ones- yes, a lot of them because of Marist's defense, but she seemed to be going for degree of difficulty a lot of the time. I like her instincts, though; she looked like a good player who was having a really, really bad game. I remembered Thazina Cook from Iona's occasional visits to St. Joh's, and she didn't fail to disappoint: very solid game for her, with a great knack for getting to the line. I thought Suzi Fregosi ran a good game- the team definitely struggled on offense when she was out. Iona seems to have built the basic MAAC template of bruising posts and small guards. They've got a Serbian center with a lot of potential, Milica Paligoric. She's only a freshman, but she's fierce on the boards. And fierce, period; there's something to be said for a woman who wears eyeblack for an indoor game. The former Yugoslavia has been fertile recruiting ground for Bozzella's team, since he starts a Serb and a Croat. Ivkovic is a damn good shooter, though her primal screams unnerved me a little bit. I'll credit Iona with a lot of class- since Marist dove for a lot of balls, they spent a lot of time on the floor, and there were two occasions when the nearest player to a fallen Red Fox was a Gael and the Iona player helped the Marist player up. We just don't see that kind of class often enough anymore.

Play of the game: Marist beat the shot clock a couple of times- once with Allenspach under the basket, making the extra pass to Fitz, once with Fitz returning the favor by feeding Allenspach for a three. I love when things like that happen. It seems like a sign of good chemistry to me.

Unsurprisingly, Marist brought a large contingent. Given that the schools aren't that far from each other, and given that Metro-North runs to both New Rochelle and Poughkeepsie, I would have expected more. A nice, loud bunch, though complaining about fouls not being called when the differential is 9 Iona fouls to 3 for Marist is a bit much.

The camera decided to cooperate this time, so pictures are here.