October 22nd, 2016: Seton Hall Meet the Team/Blue and White Scrimmage

Just the Facts, Ma'am: College season: still coming soon to a campus near you. Join your intrepid blogger after the jump for flashy plays, game show chatter, free food, appropriate tablecloths, and more at the Seton Hall Blue and White scrimmage.

Good afternoon, me bonny lads and lasses! Talk Like A Pirate Day was a month ago, but it seemed somewhat appropriate to indulge in a slight bit of pirate lingo on the deay of Seton Hall's big meet the team event.

The lobby of Walsh Gymnasium has been revamped. It's very shiny, with plaques for some of their basketball greats, displays for tournament appearances and All-Americans, tales of the 1989 Final Four team, and touchscreens to explore the Seton Hall, er, Hall of Fame. The lighting is very bright. The displays have benches, one of which I am currently perched on to type this interior scene description. I like the Pirate logo on the side of the benches, and the consistent use of the Seton Hall font on all text. (What can I say? I'm in the printing business now, so I notice fonts more.)

The women's closed-door scrimmage with an unknown opponent is running long; the doors were supposed to open about ten minutes ago for the event. I suspect that the extra time was secretly built in, though. Starting things at :45 past the hour seems a little strange. (Turns out it was Monmouth, who came in on a freakin' school bus.)

The other people waiting with us are... doing their best to uphold some of the finest traditions of New Jersey culture. I'll leave it at that. I'm impatient for the scrimmage to end too, but come on. Complaining about it won't make it finish any faster. (Good grief, they're anti-grill? How can you be anti-grill in New Jersey? All you have is land.)

All right, so it looks like there's going to either be less of a lead-in than at most events, or attendance is really going to be crap. It's 1:50 now, and they just opened the doors. There are maybe forty people here in the stands.

I forgot how much I dislike sitting in the upper deck at Walsh. Sure, you get back support, but the seats are relatively low and narrow. I'm having flashbacks to my elementary school auditorium. The safety rail also impedes the sideline view, and if this were a game we wouldn't be able to groove with the band, as is our wont. Of course, if this were a game, we'd be in the bleachers with the band and the whole thing would be irrelevant.

Other than brighter lights, the inside of Walsh doesn't look much different. All the shininess went into the lobby. But I think there are rules about how much you can do to the inside of Walsh, too.

The Seton Hall player in the tie-dye/rainbow socks has an inside edge on becoming my favorite. We have a lot of new players; a new favorite is a distinct possibility.

Tony, I love you, but "girls"? (Also, I think they need to work on the sound system. He sounded tinny and hard to hear.)

Both men and women are either wearing their actual jerseys or some of the nicest practice jerseys I've ever seen. They don't have any of the NCAA/Big East insignia on them, and the fabric looks a little more porous than regular jerseys, so I think they might be practice gear. But there are mid-majors with worse game jerseys than these practice jerseys.

Guys, I don't care how many shots you hit, don't hang on the rim for as long as that. I swear, if our rims are broken because you wanted to show off, I will NOT be amused. You wanna dunk, go ahead, but let go as soon as you can. Now they're getting a little fancier with the dunks (and just started blowing them as a result). (This should be fun. I don't know these guys from a hole in the wall.)

Minute into the scrimmage and I already want to fight with the rim- and it's not the one that all the guys were hanging from. The refs are wearing shorts. If this is the new NCAA uniform, we're going to have a problem.

At halftime of the scrimmage, white team is up on blue team 45-25. It looks like white team's job was to ball hawk, and they did a really good job of it. It looks like the new "cylinder" freedom of movement rules are going to give the guys trouble. I'm glad we don't have to deal with that nonsense. Play of the half belonged to #13 of the blue team, though, with a pell-mell drive through two defenders and a sweeping finger roll of a shot that bounced a couple of times before dropping.

So it turns out that it was starters versus subs, and starters crushed subs 70something to 40something. They cut the second half to 12 minutes, which we greatly appreciated. I'm typing this from the field house now, where there are many tables set up for a luncheon (that's sort of easing into a suppereon, or maybe a dinnereon, the secret evolutions of Eevee). This is also bright and shiny. I think this is the first time I've gotten a good long look at Seton Hall's non-Walsh-based banners, which is cool.

Gossip is correct. There is, in fact, a large inflatable pirate ship in one corner, and children are playing on it. There's a large inflatable pirate in another corner, and a smaller, non-inflatable, pirate making the rounds. The band played briefly at the get-go, their standards of the Seton Hall fight song and the Pirates of the Caribbean theme. (Yes, I do listen to "He's a Pirate" to get hyped for games.) There's also a DJ. We were provided burgers, hot dogs, and chicken fingers, and appropriate fixings for all of the above. Cleverly, they also included all sorts of beverages and dessert. Mint chocolate chip Klondike bars are best Klondike bars. I'm eating light because we made plans to go out to dinner afterwards, but the burgers are tempting

Note to self- do not do heavy ab work the day before having to sit in seats with minimal leg room. Bending and pain and achyness and I'm doing it all again Monday. It is my devout hope that as the Game Notes get bigger, your intrepid blogger gets smaller.

Yay new poster! One of the frosh seems to think she remembers us from Family Feud. Well, that's different. A couple of Pirates still have strong feelings about Nneka Ogwumike's shot (which shouldn't have counted, but I'll let Cheryl Reeve take it from here).

A mob scene just formed behind me, so either there's a fresh tray of chicken fingers or the men's team just walked in. It is the latter, and they're being hounded for autographs. You'd think they'd do something organized and let them get to the table first, but what do I know?

I feel like St. John's and Seton Hall had opposite goals with their events. Seton Hall's event was explicitly a season ticket holder event (we aren't ticket holders so much as catchers of tickets being thrown at us), so there were no student contests for ridiculous prizes. St. John's, on the other hand, was pandering to the student base, and seemed to be discouraging non-students from attending. (Not that being discouraged from doing a thing has ever actually discouraged me.) I'm curious as to whether this speaks to the desired crowd, or to the part of the crowd they're trying to add to the current crowd. It's an interesting potentially different philosophy.