June 19th, 2016: San Antonio at Connecticut

Just the Facts, Ma'am: In a game where both teams gave up double-digit leads, the Connecticut Sun outlasted the San Antonio Stars 93-90. Alex Bentley led all scorers with 29 points. Jasmine Thomas flirted with a triple-double, with 11 points, 10 assists, and nine rebounds. Kayla McBride led the Stars with 25 points.

For roller coasters, disturbing collegiate loyalties, shutting up the verbose blogger, exhaustion, traffic, and getting the job done, join your intrepid and hungry blogger after the jump.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We're coming to you on the usual tape delay from Sunrise Square at Mohegan Sun, where the San Antonio no-longer-Silver Stars take on the hometown Connecticut Sun.

Shoutout to our entrance's sweetheart of an usher, Darlene. Super friendly, really helpful to people who needed help, and helped carry someone's walker. You go, girl!

I'm not sure if Jayne Appel-Marinelli signing my match play voucher would have made it invalid or not, so I didn't risk it. (Also: so excite that VJ will be at the Liberty 20th anniversary celebration this time next week! SUCH EXCITE VERY HISTORY)

Anthem singer was trying way, way too hard. It turned into more of a cross between a hymn and a dirge. Not exactly hugely inspiring.

Well, that game turned out to be pretty good, for featuring the two worst teams in the league. It was a real roller coaster ride, with both teams holding and giving away double-digit leads. I think we saw why they're both at the bottom of the standings- but also saw what kind of depth the league has and the talent on both teams.

It was apparent, at least to me, that Sydney Colson is nothing more than an understudy for this San Antonio squad. She's there to keep the Stars prepared for an undersized, speedy backcourt of dubious shooting ability. She's a bit flashier of a passer than Danielle Robinson, or at least she wants to be, but she doesn't have the vision that she thinks she has. She was a step behind pretty much everyone on the floor. I like her fearlessness, but she has to temper it with the awareness that there are four teammates on the floor and five people who don't want her to have the ball anymore. Haley Peters brought good size off the bench. If I were designing the Stars' offense, I might have tried to get her a few more touches beyond the arc to really stretch the Sun defense (then again, since that's the kind of scheme Curt Miller is in loooooove with, maybe he's prepared for it).

For the first half of the game, I thought Kayla Alexander had donned an invisibility cloak, because there were three or four calls where I thought she was in the wrong and the officials didn't agree. There was an out-of bounds I thought went off her, a foul called on Hamby (I think) that I thought was hers, and two rather rough plays that weren't called fouls. In the second half, some of the whistles started going against her. I like her way of insinuating into space on the boards, and her move across the lane on offense. Class of 2013, so it's her put-up-or-shut-up year, and she's playing like it. Astou Ndour showed some really good flashes of talent, but she looked like she was still trying to get used to her body, like she woke up this morning and discovered that she was six-five and pretty much all arms and legs, knees and elbows. She had a really nice block on one of the Sun guards. I was surprised that she didn't get more run in the second half- she only came in near the end, to make the inbounds more difficult for Connecticut.

I had not seen Jayne Appel-Marinelli in person yet this year, and it was quite startling when I did. She's never been small, and she's never been slender, but I'm actually genuinely worried about her. No one should look that strained, that painfully intent, when shooting free throws. I can't shake the feeling that she's not well in some way, and doesn't want to face it. There were a couple of moments where you could see the flashes of her passing ability, the key to her presence in the Stars lineup. But for the most part, she was immobile, foul-prone when she did move, and unable to finish at the rim. I feel like Dearica Hamby has potential, but her coaches need to figure out her position and what skills of hers to hone. From what I saw today, she'd be better off as a four, but I don't know if she has the size to stand the constant banging. (All the twelve-year-old boys in the audience can stop giggling at their earliest convenience.) Monique Currie played like "y'all forgot about me, huh?", especially in the third quarter when she was getting open looks, or bulling her way through traffic to finish at the rim. Good old Scowl-and-Foul put in an appearance in the fourth quarter, though, after a dicey out-of-bounds call, and a turnover. Don't argue about a blatant reach-in, Monique.

Kayla McBride is a cold-blooded shooter. I'm really not sure what else she brings to the table, though the box score is showing me a nice pile of assists, but I don't remember her passing game. I just remember her taking a step, getting that space, and hitting jumpers. That's a very good thing to be very good at in basketball. Moriah Jefferson has the tools to be a worthy #2 pick, and in the very near future she'll be fantastic. But this is the pros, and this is not UConn, and even a bad W team is better than most college teams, on a relative scale. She's fast, and she has vision and style, but she needs to put a little more oomph on her runs. I think she's used to the amount of energy she needed to expend in college to make her drives, and she's not used to the level of defense she's getting in the WNBA. She had a nice first quarter, but ran out of oomph in the second half.

San Antonio really seems to be preparing for next year with their roadrunner backcourt. I know they can't really cross-market with UT-San Antonio, but it would be so perfect. Meep, meep.

Y'all who have read the GNoD for any length of time know that I give Kelly Faris a hard time. Hype backlash gets to me, and seeing a back-of-the-rotation reserve get treated like an MVP while All-Stars get disrespected irks me. I'm sure she's a perfectly decent human being, this is nothing against who she is. But let me tell you, this was Shut Queenie's Mouth Day at Mohegan Sun, because Kelly Faris had herself a day off the bench. She hit big shots when she was open, she made good defensive plays, and she scrapped for loose balls. She needs to stop committing stupid fouls after turnovers, but if that means she's trying too hard, I'll accept that as an answer. Shekinna Stricklen has a really quick trigger- she got that ball and she was shooting, damn the consequences. Maybe that fits Miller's system, but I'm not impressed.

Chiney Ogwumike is not quite Big Sister, but she was solid down low. She went through a stretch in the third quarter where she was committing all kinds of fouls, which could be a problem. More touches for Chiney, please. Jonquel Jones went to work on the offensive glass, cleaning up on misses. She's got really long arms- you can see her potential but you can also see where she needs to work on her technique. She's raw, but she's good. I don't know how consistent she'll be as a three-point shooter, and this is not a thing I think she should be doing, but it's a thing that Curt Miller thinks everyone should be doing, so it's a thing. This is what happens when your formative basketball experiences come from the New York Liberty: big players go to the basket, you grind through painful defense, and heartbreak is a thing.

So, continuing the trend of Shut Queenie's Mouth at Mohegan Sun today, I'd been talking to the husband about how Alex Bentley had been playing like various temperatures of garbage for much of the season. Apparently someone lit a fire under her, because she decided to do her best Cappie Pondexter impression today. And yes, sometimes that included ignoring open teammates and playing entirely too much one-on-one hero ball with off-balance shots. But they went in. She took off in the first quarter and never looked back. And for all of that, I was still way more impressed with Jasmine Thomas. Thomas very quietly had herself a very nice day. Her drive and dish set up Faris for one of the big threes. She had an utterly monstrous block on Jefferson, plus a slick steal on a different possession. She made the plays that her team needed to maintain control of the game (or at least their footwear- she committed the intentional foul that allowed Alex Bentley to reclaim her left sneaker from under the courtside seats next to the road bench). She's a wildly inconsistent shooter, but the more I see her, the more I like her intangibles.

Kelsey Bone started off reasonably strong, but she got her bell rung twice in rapid succession, and though she came back into the game, I don't think she was 100%. It could be my perception or my expectation that she played outside more after the injury, or she could actually have been taking more shots outside the paint after that. She's got to be more consistent, but we already knew that. There are moments when she looks like the All-Star she was once, the rock down low with the midrange touch that Connecticut traded for. But there are a lot more moments when she looks like the player Bill Laimbeer gave up on in exchange for Tina Charles. Camille Little was quiet- I still like what she brings, but she just couldn't get her shot going. She was active defensively, though. Morgan Tuck got some looks when the defense rotated, but she still needs to do work on her all-around game.

Someone in marketing overheard my, or possibly someone else's, kvetching as to why the only name-and-number shirt available was a truly hideous Tuck shirt with all the wrong fonts and the Sun logo in the wrong shades. Now there's a slightly less hideous Bentley shirt with the wrong fonts.

The crowd really got into it by the end, which is good, because if you can't get into a game where you erase a ten-point lead, what is wrong with you?

Officials didn't make a lot of friends in this one.

Notes are late because of course this was the one time the bus back was full, and also of course the one time that it took three hours down instead of three hours up. GRUMBLE.

Still not sure if Curt Miller is the right coach for this talent. Still not sure whether everyone's on the same page. But San Antonio is definitely way worse.