June 6th, 2009: Washington at Connecticut

Washington Mystics 82, Connecticut Sun 70

Lindsay Whalen can't do it alone, Marissa Coleman kicks ass, and kinks need to be worked out.


Let The Games Begin!

Other than the scenic tour of beautiful West Haven, the ride up for our first game of the regular season was uneventful. We got to Mohegan 'round about two-thirty, having left downtown Manhattan at eleven-thirty. Some young kid was trying to sell tickets in the lobby. He might have done better if he didn't keep asking the people who were going to will call. They already have tickets, you idiot.

Mohegan security really is getting ridiculous. Did they care about our little cameras? No, but I was informed that there were no stuffed animals allowed in the arena and that I would have to leave Kiabear at the bag check. Yeah, no. I stuffed her deep in my bag, brought her out for one photo op, and put her away. I would dearly like to know what the rationale is for that. No, seriously, WTF?

Speaking of WTF, Vicky Bullett didn't seem to be with the team today. What gives? Did something happen in her personal life, or were the Mystics only allowed to bring two assistants with them or something? Weird. Discomfiting. I was really looking forward to seeing her on the sidelines.

"I'm coming back out" is one of the biggest lies a player can tell a fan. Don't believe it.

Interesting anthem, though I note this is the second time Mohegan's used someone who's performing either later that night or the next day. He had better ideas than execution.

So. Jesus Hypothetical Christ, Marissa Coleman. Yeah, I know, skipping past the starters. WTFever. Jesus Hypothetical Christ, Marissa Coleman. She's so damn smooth. And she works. And she fits well with the rest of them- Currie and Coleman spent a lot of time out there together, and she also works really well with Harding. That's a good omen for them.

Okay, back to the starters. Harding seems to be back to herself. She's much faster than I remember her being, so her knee must have healed up. She kept that offense clicking. The ACC connection is really paying early dividends for the Mystics. There's a sense of teamwork on the floor that I'm not used to seeing out of Washington. Beard didn't have to play a lot, which must have been refreshing for her- some decent defensive plays, but nothing spectacular. Melvin pretty well owned the inside. She cleaned up. Sanford kept getting in foul trouble (well, worse foul trouble than her teammates, given the foul situation in the game, but more on that later), and I keep remembering why I don't like her. Currie kept getting to the line, which is her most marketable skill.

Coleman was the most useful of the Mystic reserves. Tasha Humphrey kept riding a stationary bike while on the bench, and she got into it with fuzzy orange Blaze a bit, but that was because he was blocking her view of the game, and she didn't approve of that. I don't think I blame her. Langhorne was really effective against the small lineup the Sun played for stretches (of course, this has about 80% to do with Langhorne and 20% to do with her matchup, but we'll get to that when we get to the Sun's reserves). Ajavon played six minutes, took five shots, and missed four of them. That's the Matee Ajavon I came to know and detest at RU! Brief Nikki Blue sighting. Josephine Owino continues to do a job I could very easily do.

So with this backcourt Connecticut's using, sometime around the second quarter Whalen said, in so many words and actions, "Fuck it. Erin, you're point guard today. I'm gonna be shooting guard. Not like any of you fuckers are doing anything useful." So she started swishing threes while Erin Phillips wondered where the hell her shot went, or Who she pissed off, because some of those shots were in and out. Obviously her good luck got stuck at Logan, or Tweed, or wherever she flew into, and is currently languishing in baggage claim. She's still feisty, though. Remember, kids, it's not a game until the resident Aussie hits the floor. Chante Black showed that she's still very much a rookie, and her early foul trouble hampered the Sun and their rotations. Gardin was a large bundle of bad-free-throw-shooting useless. Asjha Jones did most of her good stuff late in the game, as if someone lit a fire under her ass after the third quarter. Then she started seeking out contact and getting to the line.

I think I'm about ready to give up on talking about Whitmore. Every game is pretty much the same thing. For every good play she makes, she'll make two or three bad ones, she's still flat-footed as hell, and on bad days she flinches away from contact- this one who was supposed to be the banger Thibault was dying for. Catch the ball, Tamika. Drive the ball, Tamika. Do something that doesn't suck, Tamika, as long as it's against anyone but New York. Okay, I'm done with that. :D Kiesha Brown seems to have sworn Bride-style vengeance against the Mystics, except instead of a katana, she has a jump shot. Here's one thing that struck me about her- one play, with the clock running down, away from the ball, I noticed her gaze flick up to the clock and back again. Savvy move. Most players don't remember to check the clock when they do have the ball. Barbara Turner was way off her game on both ends of the floor- she blew two open layups, and she kept misplacing Marissa Coleman. How you do that, I'll never know, but there was one play in particular where she just wandered off, at which point Coleman canned a shot (or maybe it was Langhorne, the assignments got tweaked when Turner was playing the 4, but there was epic attention span fail on Turner's part). The guy behind me remarked that Cirone looks like Carey, and I can see that- but she's less of a placeholder and more of a spark than Carey was. Ervin's got cojones, but she's gone when Gruda shows up.

Plank was really prepared. I'm impressed. Not easy to say about a Mystics coach. Their oncourt chemistry looked great.

Our section, 19, was one section over from the Official Mystics Cheering Section. You could tell because Angela Taylor was there. *g* I suspect, given that it's at an angle to the visiting bench, that we'll be hearing from a lot of visiting fans.

The refereeing was... interesting, though some of the calls the Sun fans were kvetching about were legit calls. (The most egregious example of that was when Whalen got tangled up with Melvin and got called for the foul- the Sun faithful were sure Melvin initiated.) Everything evened out, sort of.

Halftime entertainment was drumming. It sounded pretty cool, and bonus points for giving away the drumsticks.

Connecticut is attempting a train with little kids, a la Seattle. I see absolutely no way this could end badly. [/sarcasm]

The Mystics disappeared after the game. The Northeast Corridor's Usual Suspects staked out the hotel for over an hour after the game, but the only person we saw was Barbara Turner wandering around. Maybe there's some kind of magic in the air after all.

What's in box #1? The world may never know.

It was a good game, and I won money at the casino. What's not to like? If this keeps up, I might even win back the value of my tickets. *g*