Saturday, October 22, 2016

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.

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Thursday, October 20, 2016

October 14th, 2016: Red Storm Tip Off

College season is coming! For loud music, trampolines, burritos, questionable time management, new jerseys, old jerseys, and brief glimpses of basketball, join your intrepid and regretful blogger after the jump.

Hello, again and once more! Y'all either thought it was way too soon for this or not soon enough. Okay, let's be honest, most of y'all were probably like 'oh, here she goes again'.

It's the second Friday in October, and that means it's Red Storm Tip-Off time! Due to an unfortunate bout of abdominal pain back in January (don't worry, it was just gas) I ended up with a stray half-day of personal time lingering, so I took it to make sure I could get tickets without having to pull strings. The line was bad at first, but eased up after a while, so I'm not going to say I'm not doing it that way again, but I'd really rather pull strings. (I also took the opportunity to go shopping. You know, the usuals. Decals, pins for Moooose, mini-Sharpies, Selina's home jersey. The staples.)

So because I had time to kill, I had lunch at the Popeye's near St. John's. The place was packed. I finally had to ask a young man in a St. John's jersey and appropriately colored hat if I could share his two-top. He turned out to be a Johnny in multiple senses of the word, but I'm sworn to secrecy about at least one of them. He was in Chicago too, as it turns out, and we chattered about the team for a while. He doesn't get why more students don't show up, either. I guess Thunderbirds of a feather really do flock together, as it were.

It's really a beautiful day. A bit cool if you're not wearing long sleeves, but if you've got a sweatshirt, it's perfect. Not a cloud to be seen, but just a trace of haze- just enough to make sure it's not too perfect. On those perfect sky days, terrible things tend to happen.

Look, y'all, I'm not trying to be a jerk by sitting horizontally on the bench. It's just that if I don't support Jocelyn in just the right place, the circuit breaks and she goes to sleep. That's not exactly conducive to doing typing. The DJ is more conducive to that. It helps that I'm not sitting right next to him, though. I get the feeling it's going to be less pleasant inside, since we usually end up near the speakers.

Buses are stupid. Moving right along.

The guy in front of us is hilariously enthusiastic, and it was briefly rewarded by a selection to the dance contest. And then he fled in terror of the Nae Nae, and I don't mean Danaejah Grant. Otherwise so far it's been the usual endless screaming at loud music. Save some energy for the actual event, y'all.

Shoutout to the enthusiastic dancer in the rainbow jacket. She got moves. I keep thinking she's with Imani, but the person I thought was Imani is wearing Nike, and we're an Under Armour school.

Well, that's helpful. Jade's mom has followed in the footsteps of many a Johnny parent and labeled herself with name and number.

To the dude in the old school Red Storm jacket with Thunder on the back: your jacket is awesome and your ideas intrigue me.

Aw, yesssss, here comes the band. That's better. Less deafening. We'll be over by you next month.

Moment of silence delicately walking the tightrope of decrying gun violence and violence in the community without actually blaming anyone in particular for it. I didn't realize how rough a year it had been for the STJ community.

Well, that was disappointing. I really wish they'd make the Tip-Off more about basketball and less about noisy spectacle. Somehow, they managed to put even less basketball content into it than last year.

It started off really well, too. Both teams were introduced (though I hated the cutesy "sneak in among a group of cheerleaders" entrances). The guys had shades, and those were fun. Everyone showed off their dance moves, and I think Jade Walker might take Sky Lindsay's crown as the best dancer in team history. Shirts and hats were thrown into the crowd. Joe Tartamella gave a speech, and they showed a highlight reel from the Big East tournament (I saw us in the background real quick during the first part). The year was added to the Big East championship banner. Chris Mullin dropped a shoutout to the title into his speech, which was nice of him. They were really putting emphasis on the title.

And then there was the horrifically awkward group dance routine that the women do every year and the men never do, and I think Imani Littleton might be becoming one of my favorites for her utter lack of nonsense toleration. Guys. Staaaaaaahp. Y'all could have just had Jade and Aaliyah do a dance-off, and it would have been awesome.

Then both teams did some basic drills. Nothing terribly exciting, nothing really impressive, nothing out of the ordinary. Well, except for the fact that it was the last time we saw the defending Big East champions doing basketball things. After the drills, the men did a scrimmage. And it was a fun scrimmage, and Shamorie Ponds is going to be very fun to watch for the next however many years he gives St. John's, and if I followed men's basketball I'd spend a lot of time screaming at Marcus Clark to move his ass on defense.

But, y'know, I might have wanted to see a women's scrimmage too. Or even the co-ed shootout they used to have. Or even the men's dunk contest that the women judged. Make it more about St. John's instead of about the spectacle.

Instead, we got dunkers on trampolines, who were all right, though they blew a couple of their routines. I left before the musical artist started, so I have no idea how he was.

Time management failure to the max: there is no way on God's green earth anyone who isn't a competitive eater is going to finish three dinner-size burritos in the span of a scrimmage halftime, let alone eat three burritos and hit three shots from various parts of the floor. They eventually cut it down to one burrito and one lay-up, and I'm a little sad for the dudes that they didn't get to take the other two burritos with them. (I mean, I feel less bad for the guy who won free dinner for him and twenty friends, but still. Why waste the burritos?)

I'm amused that the Chevy Camaro everyone's shooting for is the exact shade of blue that Coach Bozzella would look for in case he was buying a midlife crisis-mobile. At least the one in the ad was St. John's red.

I'm just curious what a woman has to do at St. John's to get herself a banner on the wall like so many men have. There are lots of retired and honored numbers for the men. It would kill them to hold Aliyyah Handford's 3 out of commission for a year? I know this is the worst year to bring that up because of the guy who took Chris Mullin's number, but the point remains that the only number the women have retired is for a player who died young. We have history, but so little of it is honored, and that makes me sad.

I love my Johnnies. I really do. But every time I go to a big St. John's event, I am reminded that no matter how much we do, how much we achieve, we'll always be second fiddle. I'm reminded that even when we're given equal billing, we're not given equal treatment. I'm reminded that men's basketball is to St. John's what football is to BCS schools. So I love them, but it's love mixed with frustration.

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Saturday, October 1, 2016

September 24th, 2016: Phoenix at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: New York fought back from behind, but couldn't get over the hump in Phoenix's 101-94 win. Diana Taurasi's 30 points led four Mercury players in double figures. Tanisha Wright had 21 to lead the Liberty.

For farewells, baroque rants, girls who love baskets, the DeWanna Bonner brand pogo stick, rivers and rivers of denial, and the grim urge to finish the damn thing already, join your intrepid and ever so slightly melancholy blogger after the jump.
So here we are. A team I once dubbed the Maalox Moments gets to play a team rightly called the Mercury in a do or die game. If there isn't a heart attack somewhere by the end of this, I'll be surprised.

Shout out to Jay Parry for the accidental assist on DeWanna Bonner- she was about ready to run off the court without acknowledging any of the fans, but then Parry called her back because Bonner had forgotten to hug her, and when she attempted to leave the second time she was a bit slower.

We have towels! Three different colors of them, one color per section, to create a striped effect. Ours are white; my father-in-law's was green, and there are also orange ones. People have been snatching them off seat backs like they were made out of diamonds. One woman ran over here from section 108 and snatched up something like two rows' worth. Lady, the first quarter was barely half over, you can wait.

Stirring anthem by a firefighter. The Liberty linked arms; so did the Mercury, with Bone and Bass kneeling.

At halftime, Phoenix is up 52-41 in a game that has not exactly featured huge amounts of defense. This is not okay. I would like defense now, especially from the Liberty.

The seat poacher in front of us is rooting for buckets, no matter which team hits them, and it's very annoying. (I know she's a poacher because the seats in front of us are owned by a season subscriber, the Cowboys fan we had a run-in with some months ago.)

The guest DJ is pretty good. I'll take that.

Shavonte Zellous has learned how to incorporate the fiery torch into her pregame dance routine. Bit late in the year for it, but at least no one's on fire.

I think I may have expressed in some part of the Internet at some point that I am not a fan of the WNBA's new playoff format. In case I did not do so in any place where my faithful readers may have encountered it: I think the playoff format, with two single-elimination rounds, is incredibly, mind-numbingly stupid, and now that it has brought an untimely end to my team's season, it's safe to say that I loathe it with the power of a thousand fiery suns. It is a terrible idea that punishes both good teams and bad teams. It is a solution in search of a problem, creating such problems along its merry way. It is an invention of a power-mad network, controlling and demanding, pulling the strings where the money is. It is a travesty of a system, two-tiered and hypocritical.

And that's just the polite way to word how I feel.

The problem I have in writing this is how to properly channel my rage. After a frustrating loss like this, frustrating simply by what it means, there's usually an easy target. But I can't say we played badly, or that the officials jobbed us out of a game, or that the other team didn't deserve to win. I can point at turnovers and missed free throws, as I'm sure any coach will. By these small things are games won and lost. I could, should I want to, complain about missed screens, but I should be used to such things. So should I not be angry, when we did all that we could, and fell short against a talented team that underachieved for most of the year?

Damn right I'm angry. Damn right I wanted another round to cheer my team on. Damn right I don't think it's fair that we get one shot against a team that basically fell into the playoffs because someone had to, and is now getting hot because they got a player who actually knows how to play defense.

But I suppose you want to hear about the game, because it was a good game, and for the most part a game the league should be proud of. (Which I fear will be part of the problem- ESPN and the WNBA will say that putting all the pressure into a single game makes it a good game, much like MLB took the heart-pounding excitement of a single-game tiebreaker and turned it into the second wild card.)

Phoenix mostly played a six-man rotation. Lindsey Harding played briefly in the first half and reminded everyone why she wanders from team to team like a door-to-door salesman. The one shot she took was short, and bad, and a reminder why she doesn't shoot. Mistie Bass also played briefly, and she seemed to find position more than her teammates seemed to find her, but I guess that wasn't the play. DeWanna Bonner subbed for pretty much everyone at some point or another, and her height and length made a big difference for the Mercury. She defended guards for much of the night, and that meant that trying to get a pass to Sugar Rodgers meant trying to get it through a player seven inches taller, with a longer wingspan than that. She created mismatches on both sides of the floor, and that left a lot of matchup situations that heavily favored the Mercury.

Actually, now that I think about it, I understand how people forget Candice Dupree. She's quiet, which is a real rarity with the Mercury. She gets fired up when her teammates do things, but she doesn't seem to run her mouth, or strut up and down the floor, or complain to officials every single time a whistle is blown. So her teammates get doubled, and she gets open, and she either hits the midrange jumper or she cuts backdoor. She's the silkiest player I ever did see. Brittney Griner needs to build up her strength a little bit- she's got the height and the reach, and she knows how to use them, but if she gets bodied up, she doesn't know how to power through. Carolyn Swords knocked her out of position more than once, enough to disrupt her shot. But she was solid when the Liberty came to drive the lane. Penny Taylor pretty much broke Swin Cash's ankles, and possibly her spine in the same metaphorical sense, whenever she made that cut from the weak side to drive to the basket. Two or three times, Taylor made that move and Swin buckled. She was deadly beyond the arc, to the irritating glee of some of the people sitting in front of us. (One girl was just rooting for buckets, no matter who took them, but one dude decided to go all in for the Mercury around the third quarter.)

Diana Taurasi has the kind of grin that makes you want to punch it off her face, but she backs up her cockiness. She came up big in the fourth quarter, and the three at the shot clock buzzer was probably the psychological game-winner, even if it wasn't the actual-facts margin of victory shot. She's clutch, and she's tough, and even if she can't defend for beans, sometimes it's not necessary. Marta Xargay's defense was critical in this one. She erased Sugar Rodgers. It's strange to see a modern-day Mercury player playing defense on a regular basis, but she stuck close to Sugar and made sure she couldn't get open. I don't like her soccer-style flopping and dramatics at the barest hint of a whisper that someone might be thinking about considering coming close to her, but she's exactly what Phoenix needed.

They adjusted. That's unusual enough for them that I have to give Brondello credit. They played defense, which is also unusual for them. They stepped up.

I don't know if Brittany Boyd's head was entirely in the game. She committed some stupid fouls, and I think Taurasi might have gotten into her head a little (which Taurasi is good at doing). Her vision wasn't where it needed to be. Shavonte Zellous was energetic, and she provided a spark off the bench. We needed a lot from her, because she was subbing for Swin, and Swin was in some kind of bad way. Epiphanny Prince showed that she might just be ready to get back to her old self, coming up with a big shot to end the second half for the Liberty. She's why I'm not as pessimistic about next year as some people are.

Amanda Zahui B played briefly, for those end-of-quarter moments when Tina Charles needed some rest, and she showed that she wasn't ready for the big stage. There's one play she made, or rather didn't make, that seemed to highlight the problem- she was in perfect rebounding position, but the rebound fell just off her fingertips, and Griner seized it like it was the last bottle of water in the desert. You can't play sloppy and lackadaisical in the playoffs, and you can't play lackadaisical if you want to be part of the team's future plans. Kiah Stokes made defensive plays and brought physicality, but it was clear that she was still limited from whatever hip injury ended her regular season run. Her mobility was not where it normally was.

Tanisha Wright stepped up big in the fourth quarter. I think near the end the Mercury were more than happy to let her finish long possessions with two-point drives, since she was doing as much to wind down the game as they were. She was clutch, and she was pretty much willing the Liberty back into the game in the second half. She had no fear, and with Griner in the middle, she was one of the few players who wasn't afraid to penetrate and keep penetrating. (And dear Lord, that sentence came out so many different flavors of wrong.) Sugar Rodgers had no space to get a shot off in the first half. In the second, the team made adjustments and she was able to use screens to get open. The most positive thing I've seen in the last few games is her increased willingness to drive the lane and put up the floater, though she seemed to be taking it from further out thanks to the Griner effect. (Should that be capitalized?)

Swin Cash looked done. She couldn't keep up with Penny Taylor on the drive. Taylor would drive, and Swin would buckle like she had a hinge at the waist. She gave it all she had, but there wasn't very much left to give. Carolyn Swords gave me flashbacks to her Boston College days, but in a good way. She moved Griner and found space down below, and the Phoenix defense forgot about her for long stretches. I love to see a player have to step up and do so when she's called upon. Methinks the big girl wants to stay around a little longer. Tina Charles was solid, and she rebounded strongly, but I got the sense that she wasn't being as aggressive as she should have been in an elimination game. Mercury defense definitely helped, but we saw more of the long-range Tina and less of the paint destroyer Tina, and I really prefer the paint destroyer Tina.

I would also really prefer if officials would call moving screens where players leave their feet, but that was really the only major problem I had with the officiating. Sort of a refreshing change, that.

It was a good game. We left way too many points at the foul line, and we didn't adjust to the Mercury's abrupt decision that defense would be a lovely idea. We showed our resiliency, comin back over and over again. I hate this format very much, and I think in a three-game series we would have come out on top because the dynamic would have been different. But it is what is.

We'll be back. We still have one of the best players in the league to build around. It's taken me a while to compile these notes, because I'm not happy about things being over, and I don't know what to say or how to say it. The usual thank yous seem trite, especially ith Swin riding off into the sunset.

I think I feel like we've been cheated out of a meaningful postseason. This new format- but I've already ranted about that. The one-and-done format is not suitable for the professional level.

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