November 17th, 2016: Duquesne at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: After a strong first half showing, St. John's faltered in the second half, and Duquesne came away with the 71-65 win. Chassidy Omogrosso led all scorers with 25 for the Dukes, while Amadea Szamosi added 18 points and seven rebounds. Aaliyah Lewis led the Red Storm with 17 points and six assists.

For unfortunate hats, traveling Pennsylvanians, freshman leadership, senior instability, discovering roles, height differential, and a bear, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.
Today is the day. Tonight is the night. This is the night we celebrate one of the few good things that has come out of this miserable disaster of a year that "annus horribilis" doesn't even begin to describe. The Johnnies open at home tonight, and the banners get updated: Big East Champions, NCAA Tournament. And we get to revenge ourselves on Duquesne. As you may remember from last season, DUQUESNE MUST SUFFER. (Don't worry, Dukes fans. This is me getting the last of last season's bitterness out.)

At St. John's, we wear red on Fridays, but today is Thursday and I'm wearing my red. Playlist is prepped with all the standbys. I'm already hyped to see what we're going to do this year, even as I keep my expectations low.

At halftime, St. John's is up 39-27. Alisha Kebbe has been very fun to watch.

No pregame notes, because buses suck.

There's a person behind me who looks an awful lot like Essence Carson. If she is: hi, Essence! (I admit, it took three tries to figure out the six degrees of separation that would get a Rutgers alumna here, and once I got past an affinity for red and white, then a fondness for Jersey girls {like Jade}, I remembered, oh, yeah, we hired Tasha Pointer. Look, I think in odd directions sometimes.)

We are now the proud owners of season ticket holder hats. White stitching on red fabric gives me the heebie-jeebies now, but it's a nice hat otherwise. (If you have not met me: love me, love me, love me, I'm a true-blue liberal.)

Army swearing-in at half, in honor of Military Night. It got a tiny bit quieter at the part about obeying the orders of the president...

Keylantra Langley, she of the shot-clock beating shots, is at courtside, rocking a niiiiiice retro-style letter jacket. I think I also spotted Kimberly Spruill in the crowd (unfortunately, her claim to fame was in getting the ball rolling on, "sure, let's give out 5 as soon as the class of 2013 is out the door, it's not like anyone important wore it")

We'll live and die by our defense, and on where Jade and Akina's shots are. But it might be a little less painful to watch than I thought.

The band shirts are super snazzy. I'm still not sure about this navy blue thing, but it's all right. I guess.

...no, sorry, still looks wrong to see someone other than Nadirah in 5 and someone other than Danaejah in 15. It's going to take a while.

Well, that escalated quickly. I think we saw two teams determining their identities in the third quarter, and it looked a lot like St. John's was expecting Aliyyah Handford and Danaejah Grant to step in and save the day. This is not going to work now that Liyyah and Nae have graduated. Duquesne found their offense, and found the flaws in our defense.

Halle Bovell played a short stint in the first half and showed a whole lot of speed on a nice cut to the basket. Angela Staffileno played like a woman who watches a lot of hockey- unfortunately, while I admire a good solid body-check, not only is that skill not applicable to the game of basketball, but it is also not permissible in women's hockey, so she's outta luck no matter which way you slice it. Paige Cannon played a few minutes in the second half, and mixed it up in the paint.

Brianna Thomas reminds me somewhat of Brianna Turner, and not just because of the name. Something about her build and her style just brings Turner to mind. Julijana Vojinovic did not have the greatest footing- she fell down quite a bit. But she used her height well to pick up rebounds.

If Duquesne were one of my teams, and one of my family's teams, we would have adopted Chassidy Omogrosso as our favorite, because she's exactly the kind of player my mom is a sucker for: undersized, quick as lightning, efficient, feisty, and brilliant. Unfortunately, since Duquesne is not one of my teams and must suffer, I spent most of the game muttering "goddamn blonde waterbug" under my breath. But it's still a compliment. There's something I like about Conor Richardson, but I can't put my finger on it. She has that look on the floor like she's going to be a big time player one of these days. Nina Aho seemed to find her stride as the game went on, and her size was giving us fits all game- there's something about running ridiculously tall guards out there that utterly flummoxes us, though that might have to do with Tiny Aaliyah being, well, tiny.

Kadri-Ann Lass used her height and frame to get space on the block for rebounds, and to set good picks and screens for her teammates. I didn't necessarily notice her as a rebounding force during the game, though this might be because Duquesne doesn't wear names on the back of their jerseys, and I'm not always good at identifying players when they're not wearing names. Amadea Szamosi seemed to hit her stride in the second half, taking advantage of her height on her defender to roll to the basket and score, or just shoot high post shots over said defenders.

Duquesne's defense was solid, if unremarkable. It seemed like they took advantage of height mismatches a lot.

Andrayah Adams is not Danaejah Grant, although she's wearing Danaejah's number and shares Danaejah's propensity for compression sleeves and leggings. I know it's unfair to compare them, especially in Andrayah's second game, but it was clear that she wasn't quite ready for the big time and she definitely wasn't ready to play any kind of big minutes on the college level. Tamesha Alexander played a couple of unremarkable minutes at the end of the second quarter. Sandra Udobi played a couple of stretches in the first half, and you could tell her speed wasn't there. The heart and hustle were, but that knee hasn't been right since I can't remember when. The new haircut's cute, though.

Crystal Simmons brought the defense, relentless and tough. I would like to see her look for some sort of offense, only because we can't play 4-on-5 if she's in the game, even if she essentially turns it into 4-on-4 at the other end. Jordan Agustus missed a lot of makeable shots and made shots harder than they had to be. Maya Singleton impressed me with her rebounding and her toughness, although she's, sadly, ahead of the curve in terms of shooting free throws like a St. John's post.

It's going to sound strange to say that a freshman in her second-ever college game was the linchpin to the game, but I felt like we lost a lot of our offensive attacking mindset when Alisha Kebbe left with a left leg injury. She was going strong to the rim. I really like what she brings to the table, and I hope she's okay. Akina Wellere's shot was off all night- granted, on two or three shots the rim was cruel and the shots bounced in and out, but I recall a easy lay-up late that she left way short, and I feel like that might encapsulate her night. Aaliyah Lewis went into attack mode late, when it was clear that no one else was really going to step up on offense, but she can't be both Aaliyah and Aliyyah. She's a great distributor on the fast break, and she's fearless on the drive, and she's a pretty good jump shooter- but she's never all of those things at once. She can't play both roles at once.

Imani Littleton needs to speed those feet up somehow if she's going to stay our defensive specialist down low. She got burned a couple of times by the taller members of Duquesne's squad. I like when she goes to the basket, like she did for a stretch in the second quarter. I'm most disappointed in Jade Walker. Yes, the jumper was pretty, but it wasn't consistent, and she doesn't go to the basket nearly as often as she should. What bothered me more was that she wasn't showing the leadership and poise we need out of our seniors. She loves to shoot- fine. She wants to be the primary option- fine. But she has to have the court awareness to know that she's going to be the focus of the defense. She panicked. There's a play that sticks in my mind: the offense, as always, was being rather more methodical than I like, and Jade had the ball with the clock ticking into single digits. At 9 seconds left on the clock, she threw it back out to Aaliyah to reset the offense. You can't do that if you're a senior and the primary scoring option- you have to create, not panic. Another play: late in the game, down four, with the ball, Aaliyah passes to Jade- except Jade ducks out of the way, and Akina's not ready for the pass. Out of bounds, Dukes' ball, essentially game over. If Jade wants that Big East trophy to stay in a monogamous relationship with her, she better step her game up.

Officiating, as always, was inconsistent, but we've come to expect that. I think it flipped in the third and fourth quarters, but that could just be one team adjusting and one team not.

We've got to work on coordinating crowd noise between cheer and dance. The two sides of the gym aren't in sync, and we've got to work out some way of fixing that.

It was good to see all the usual suspects, and RedZone made a good showing of themselves in the endcourt. They better be back on Sunday night- Miami is no joke.