December 4th, 2016: Wake Forest at Seton Hall

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Wake Forest raced out to a 16-point lead in the first half, but Seton Hall clamped down on defense in a 23-6 third quarter and rode out a wild fourth for the 70-63 comeback win. LaTecia Smith had 19 points to lead Seton Hall, while Lubirdia Gordon shone with 15 points, 13 rebounds, and five blocks. Elisa Penna led Wake Forest with 15 points.

For tall shooters, big post plays, rocking the house, angry overcaffeinated Italian leprechauns, and all kinds of comebacks, join your intrepid and property-damaging blogger after the jump.

And here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again. I'm too tired for this, but here we are in South Orange anyway, getting ready to see Seton Hall take on Wake Forest.

We figured out where the secret-ish seating area is in the lobby, which allowed me to finish yesterday's notes with some semblance of back support. I'm getting too old for this, but not old enough to be anyone's mother.

Great anthem by the band, which has been rocking some great material. The emphasis on flute has set them apart, and gives the anthem a bit of a retro feel.

At halftime, Wake Forest is up 32-21 on Seton Hall, and it should honestly be more. This game has been full of brain farts. It has not been good to watch, for either team. At least we're at full strength, though that might be false now (Jayla Jones-Pack took a hit to the back of the head midgame and eventually came out). Officiating has been a hot, reckless mess, more fixated on procedural mistakes than people getting hit.

How the worm turns, or some other similar expression. Seton Hall laid the smackdown defensively in the third quarter, and at the same time we found our offensive mojo. The offensive mojo stayed, even as Wake Forest found their own way on offense late in the fourth. It got pretty wild and it got pretty loud.

The Demon Deacons were pretty short-handed, between one thing and another- it looked like half their roster was either ineligible or injured. They only brought three players off the bench, and those not for very long. Clarisse Berranger's stint was so short and so unmemorable that ESPN doesn't even bother mentioning her in the box score; I had to get validation of my sanity from the SHU box score to confirm that I hadn't hallucinated her. Ona Udoh got tangled up with players a lot and ended up committing fouls in a hurry- when Wake Forest wasn't getting called for fouls she was still picking them up, which is pretty impressive in the wrong kind of way. Tyra Whitehead brought a lot of size in reserve too, and did her damage late, at the basket.

Milan Quinn has one of the weirdest free throw wind-ups I've ever seen, and there are a lot of very strange free throws out there. She actually goes up on tiptoe, almost leaving her feet, before coming down to release it. In a live-ball situation, I think that might actually be a travel. She's very smooth when she's not at the line, and has a pretty nice sweeping sort-of hook. Elisa Penna was killing us in the first half with midrange jumpers. Like a lot of European posts, or at least players who are assigned to the post by coaches, she has a very nice jumper, but she's willing to go to the rack as well. Alex Sharp was very physical, and did not make herself the most popular person in South Orange with her hard hit on Kaela Hilaire. Ariel Stephenson found her shot late in the fourth to pull Wake Forest back into the game, and had a nice steal to go along with it. Amber Campbell dropped a most righteous block on a Deja Winters corner three and played the passing lanes well.

Wake Forest has some of the worst passing and ballhandling I've ever seen out of a major conference team. They whipped a lot of passes past their intended recipients, out of bounds. I think they might still be a year away from really contending.

It's good to see Martha Kuderer back on the floor for the Pirates- she's a little ahead of schedule. She's still very tentative, passing up shots that are in her wheelhouse and causing turnovers because of that, but I'm glad to have her back- especially since we might have lost Jayla Jones-Pack for the near future. She took a tumble in the first quarter, hit the back of her head, tried to stay in the game despite the official's suggestions otherwise, left the game a few possessions later, and didn't return to the game, though she did stay on the bench. Shadeen Samuels played briefly in the first half, but I think her knee was bothering her- she wasn't as aggressive as she usually is. Jordan Molyneaux played like a bit of a klutz, but finished at the basket on a pretty pass from Kaela. If Jayla's injured ofr any length of time, we're going to need her.

Claire, we need to have a talk about your shot selection. If the game is winding down, the team is trying to run clock, and there are 16 seconds on the shot clock, the situation does not call for Claire Lundberg to take a somewhat contested three from two feet behind the line. Claire baffles me. There are days when all she seems to be is a spot-up shooter who can deflect passes just by being taller than the person she's assigned to defend. And there are days when she goes into the lane and takes lay-ups like the tall person she is. Today was a shooter day. Skyler Snider brought solid defense in her short minutes. Kaity Healy brought vocal leadership and direction.

Kaela Hilaire's another player who might need a talk about shot selection. I feel like her reaction under pressure is to take the shot herself instead of looking for other options, and that led to a lot of really bad shots, both in the sense of timing and in the sense of being nowhere near going in the basket. I love the intensity and the passion she brings on the defensive end- watching her play the press with TT or Quanny is a thing of terrifying beauty. I also love watching LaTecia Smith regularly rebound like she's about six to nine inches taller than she actually is. She has ups and she has moxie. Clock awareness is still an issue for her, though. But she picked her moments well on offense.

JaQuan Jackson did not have her shot until very late in the game, and it seemed to throw her off on both ends of the floor. She scrambled after loose balls, and came up with her defensive plays that way, instead of playing the passing lanes with her usual effectiveness. She was the recipient of a lot of her teammates' hustle. Deja Winters got three-point happy, and I don't know whether that was part of the game plan or just Deja's preference. Other than her shooting, I thought she played well. But the unquestioned star of the game was Lubirdia Gordon. Bird had herself a day, and it was glorious. She took down rebounds and secured them, which had been a problem for her. She hit her lay-ups, and the ones she didn't hit, she rebounded. She hit her free throws, and after all the years I've spent raging about post players not hitting free throws, this is a glorious and blessed relief. She shut things down on the inside for Wake Forest. I think we can dub this beast mode. It's been a rough start of the year for Bird, so I'm so happy for her that she had a day like this.

Officiating was uneven and fixated more on procedural calls than contact. On the other hand, they didn't throw Tony out for being extremely angry and somewhat overcaffeinated. I didn't see the exact moment he lost the jacket, but at some point in the second quarter it was gone. I don't know if he Reeved it or just tossed it to the side in disgust. It went back on eventually, when the Hall had taken control back.

By the way: Tony, you know how much we love you, but you looked at all that height Wake Forest was throwing at us and you went small in the starting lineup? I think the diplomatic way to address that is, "I find your decision highly unusual and would greatly appreciate hearing the logic behind it, because it appears to have evaded my grasp."

But let me tell you something. In that third quarter, when the defense picked up and the offense picked up and the gap started closing, there's no place I would have rather been than in the middle of that crowd, husband to the right of me, band to the left of me, managers and boosters across from me, Tony waving his arms, the bench players clapping the rhythm. It got loud in a hurry, and it was amazing. We were stomping the bleachers (or, in my case, slamming the clipboard against the bleachers) and screaming at the top of our lungs. When it gets like that, there's no time for the complex chants. You can't get that many people that organized that fast. You have to stick with the classics. "DE-FENSE!" *clap-clap* "LET'S GO PIRATES!" *clap clap clap-clap-clap* (or insert your team) Sometimes you can't even do that, and it's time for sheer, raw, noise, anything that gets into the other team's head and jams their signals. Walsh whips into that kind of focused fury faster than any of my other homecourt.

So that turned out to be pretty fun, though if we have to do that much more often I may end up breaking the bleachers, but hey, they need to be replaced anyway.