Saturday, February 13, 2016

February 13th, 2016: LIU at St. Francis NY

Just the Facts, Ma'am: LIU gave up as much as a seven-point lead, but execution down the stretch in overtime gave the Blackbirds victory in the Battle of Brooklyn at St. Francis, 65-62. Shanovia Dove led all scorers with 24 points, while Shanice Vaughan contributed 22 off the bench. Cassidy Derda led St. Francis with 16 points on 7-7 shooting, adding seven rebounds.

For putting some step in your pep, a cauldron of noise, cultural mismatches, forgetting to write about intersectionality, offensive rebounds, free throws winning ball games, and confusing layouts, join your intrepid and cozy blogger after the jump.
A blogger's work is never done, not when the city pods are home both for the NEC and the BEast. We're at St. Francis today for the rematch of the Battle of Brooklyn. LIU's already got a fairly large contingent in the house, including at least some of the dance team.

LIU might have as many as eight players today! This is exciting news! Some teams get bitten by the injury bug; some teams get bitten by a swarm of them.

PinkZone at St. Francis today. The petty part of me notices that even SFC's t-shirts are lighter than everyone else's.

Apparently SFC's cafeteria is not fail. Good to know if I ever decide to give them money.

I think the dance team may actually perform in the stands, the way they do at home games, and the way I've seen dance teams do at some rivalry games (Lafayette-Lehigh, and the Seton Hall game at Villanova).

At halftime, LIU is up 32-25, but you'd never know it from listening to Coach Oliver. Sitting behind LIU's bench is quite revealing. I really should not be saying things like this about the person who gives me tickets, but the way she handles herself with her team, I would run away screaming. Imagine the relentless commentary of Harry Perretta combined with the control freak tendencies and habit of talking at people who have not done the anger-making thing on the bench of Joe Tartamella, with a dash of Brenda Frese's wandering around the court, and maybe Kim Mulkey's taste in footwear.

(Speaking of shoes, Coach Oliver was like a little kid with a new toy when she discovered the resonance of her shoes against SFC's court.)

Clock over the basket in front of SFC's bench went out in the first quarter. LIU was not amused. "We should have played this at our place. Our clocks work." (We did play this at our place. We lost.)

It's good to have Shanovia Dove back- she has 12 and is taking a lot of the pressure off everyone else. Cassidy Derda came on strong in the second quarter for all 11 of her team-high points.

Now that is a Battle of Brooklyn. Lots of hard work, lots of hustle, lots of big plays from senior players. I'll say that St. Francis choked a little down the stretch, missing three or four shots right at the rim. LIU came up with the shots when we needed them.

Shanice Vaughan is a trooper- this is the second game I've been to where she's gone down hard, come out of the game- and gone back in to kick some ass. She drove fearlessly, sometimes carelessly, and threw up a lot of shots. I don't know if all of them were the called play. Jolanna Ford came on stronger in the second half, decent on defense and hitting her free throws down the stretch when it counted. Gosh, it's nice to have a bench, even if it's only one player longer than the last two times out- but we're in a better position with the players we have back. (Uh, sorry, Lily.)

Ashley Brown ran point with some hiccups- there was one sequence where she came out after a spectacularly dumb play and pretty much blew off Coach Oliver. It's good to have experience available, though. Shanovia Dove was a crucial outside threat- not all of those shots might hve been in the game plan, but most of them seemed to be in the flow of the offense. She was fearless. It's really good to have a decent outside threat again. SO MUCH OFFENSE YAY. Stylz Sanders was free-styling a lot on offense, and not always hustling after shots, but she worked the baseline well on loose balls.

DeAngelique Waithe rebounded pretty much everything to start the game- I think she had three of the first four rebounds- but fell off the cliff so sharply that I wonder if she's under the weather and doesn't want to admit it. She got pushed around a lot by Levey and Derda, to the point of frustration both from her and the coaching staff. Brianna Farris brought the tough defense, but St. Francis remembered her shooting tendencies from the last game and guarded her pretty closely.

I love my teams, but either I have really high stndards that are unrealistic, or I cheer for some of the dumbest teams in Division I. In LIU's case, I understand part of Coach Oliver's frustration- no one ever seems to look back to the bench to run the play. I think they still have old habits to break out of and old dependencies to shake.

St. Francis ran more of their bench players out there than LIU did, almost as if Thurston were experimenting. We got really brief looks at Tori Wagner, Blair Arthur, and Dana DiRenzo, none of whom really made an impact. (I actually hadn't even realized that DiRenzo entered the game until she committed a foul.) Rachel Iozzia came in earlier and scored a little bit. I feel like she carried herself with more confidence than some of the younger players around her. Becky Pund came in to play point a little bit and steady things down. I really don't remember much about her, but that might be as much because it's hard to tell apart all these girls with ponytails as it is because of her play. Olivia Levey threw her weight around down low and picked up baskets in the paint.

Leah Fechko needs to switch sports already. Her future is clearly in football. Are the Sharks still around? She tackles well and she's very physical. She's not afraid to go to the rack. I should respect that, but I don't like people who tackle in basketball. Cassidy Derda was a flat-out match-up nightmare. She was physical enough to move around the more slender LIU posts, but she had nice stroke from outside as well. She used her height to pull down rebounds even when she was boxed out. If they'd gone to her more, they might have pulled it off. Maria Palarino had some nice moves inside, though she had one less basket than the St. Francis announcer thought she did (I figured it was going to be a long and perhaps uninformative day when they misattributed the first basket).

Alex Delaney rebounded decently and hit free throws late in the game to force the overtime. I don't remember much else about her. Derda was a bit distracting, forward-wise. Kat Phipps was strong in the third quarter to get St. Francis right back in it, but I don't remember much else about her. I know I just said that, but when it's an endless array of ponytails without names attached, and most of those ponytails aren't doing anything different from any of the other ponytails.

St. Francis had good ball movement, and they were able to get some wiiiiiiiide open looks in the paint. I cannot fathom how we kept losing Derda. She's enormous for the NEC.

Refs were counting things quick today- five seconds, three seconds, that sort of thing. Nothing really egregious.

The team seemed fascinated by the Battle of Brooklyn plaque. Then again, the last win in the series was four years ago- I don't know if any of them have held the plaque.

I'm really excited for this team, even if I want to love them with a 2 x 4 sometimes... I just can't shake the feeling that something's going to explode if one game goes wrong.

No comments: