March 21st, 2009: VCU at Rutgers (NCAA tournament)

Rutgers Scarlet Knights 57, VCU Rams 51

The Rams throw down, Epiphanny Prince takes over, and there's a whole lot of ugly going on.


*ding ding ding* Let the fight begin!

Rutgers is a hard-fighting, tough defensive team that isn't afraid to get physical. So is VCU. Anyone who didn't think this was going to be a rough game for either team clearly hadn't done their homework.

So what was it with the crazy #23s today? While I do like Jessica Taylor's ram's-horns hairdo, I thought she was going to attempt to kill someone by the end of the game. Maybe we can have her and Crites duke it out at halftime of the Rutgers-Auburn game for everyone's entertainment. Hollingsworth stepped it up in the second half for VCU, taking advantage of some of Vaughn's mental lapses. If Radislava Bacharova had been able to hit the broad side of a barn, I think VCU would have pulled the upset, but with Ray and Zurich taking turns in her face, she wasn't getting a lot of good shots, and most of the ones she did get didn't fall. Such is life. Waller couldn't hit a free throw to save her life, and she was really starting to get chippy by the end of the game. Lane did a good job controlling the Rams' offense. Rorie spent a lot of time in foul trouble, forcing VCU to go to their bench. (For that matter, Hollingsworth and her replacement Courtney Hurt [a very well-named young lady if ever I saw one] also spent a lot of time in foul trouble. It's a tribute to Cunningham's juggling ability that neither of them fouled out, though Rorie, whose trouble started this parenthetical aside, did.) A very physical team, a very physical game. Not much came easy for either team. Lot of elbows thrown, lot of hard screens, lot of bumps, lot of falls.

No, here's a slightly better illustration of how physical and hard it was: by the end of the game, Myia McCurdy was wearing #30 and Brittany Ray was wearing #40 because their real jerseys were bloodstained. (I thought Ray coming out in Linda Miles's #40 was a declaration of war, to be honest- "Okay, fine, you wanna hit? Well, guess what? We have people who can do that professionally. Bring it on.") But blood, sweat, and fistfights aside, this was Epiphanny Prince's game. When it got close, she pretty well decided that she wasn't letting this upset happen on her floor, and she turned on the jets. I keep forgetting, or maybe today was just exceptional, just how quick her hands are- she got a lot of her rebounds by stealing them away from bigger players, and then there were the straight-up steals on defense. Vaughn played all right, although I'm not enthusiastic about her constant forays out of the post on defense- she doesn't quite have the foot speed to make the cut back inside to get back on her assignment when the ball goes back inside. And if I start on the free throw shooting, I'm gonna barf all over the computer, and this computer's been through more than enough crap. Ray and Zurich had the busy tasks of stopping Hollingsworth's sidekicks, so any offense from them was a nice little bonus. Rushdan looks recovered (though there was one heart-stopping moment when she landed awkwardly and her braced knee bent oddly- she was fine, though), even if she couldn't quite keep control of the ball. McCurdy's giant, strappy knee brace makes her look like she's being assimilated by the Borg, starting at the bottom and moving up. It's actually kinda scary. Speed got some good minutes, and though she did make a questionable decision or two, she didn't play too badly, and with the RU freshmen, I'll take what I can get. (Baby steps. Baby steps. Not everybody can be Da'Shena Stevens. ;)) I'm terribly afraid I'm going to spend the next four years mixing up Lee and Pope unless one of them gets into high rotation. Junaid just didn't have her head in the game.

The refereeing in this game was loose and very inconsistent. I think the elbow-throwing/trash-talking incident that led to the two techs at the end could have been avoided if some of the other extracurriculars had been called beforehand. It seems like the refs are letting them play- at least that's the impression I got from the two games I saw- but there's letting them play and then there's letting them brawl. If that's the officiating style for the tournament, then I like Rutgers's chances against Auburn on Monday, because I don't think Auburn can bang that long unless Carrier stays miraculously out of foul trouble.

Shame on the fans behind the home bench for not showing up until the second game. That swath of seats that stayed empty throughout the first game, visible with every sweep of the camera, could not in any way have looked good.

Auburn versus Rutgers is going to be a very interesting game, and I look forward to seeing it. The strategy should be very, *very* exciting, but I'm a dork like that.