Saturday, November 11, 2017

November 10th, 2017: New Orleans at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma’am: The Red Storm started slowly, but found their footing late, in a 77-61 win over New Orleans. Marcus LoVett had 23 points to lead St. John’s, 16 as part of a second-half surge. Travin Thibodeaux had 18 points off the bench to lead the Privateers.

For hard bleachers, gift disparities, crowd detachment, height miscalculations, intriguing guards, and the female gaze, join your intrepid and exhausted blogger after the jump.

On to the second half of our basketball double-header. It’s 37 minutes before tip-off and they’re already having staff members start checking assigned seats. I mean, really. I’ll move if and when they tell me.

New Orleans has a dude who is really, really tall, and really, really skinny.

To the dude in the red Mohawk- eff outta here. We got to campus at the same time, and yet I don’t remember seeing you anywhere in Carnesecca during the women’s game. I abhor these Johnny-come-latelies.

Someone has a custom St. John’s jersey with the #15 and “World Peace” on the back. Well played, sir. I’m not sure what’s up with the throwback Warren Moon jersey, though.

I’m starting to think something really is wrong with the rim closer to the men’s home bench (I still think of it as the visiting bench). UNO has had all kinds of practice shots go wacky over there.

I love that Qadashah has, like, a receiving line up behind section 11. Either she has a positively enormous family that’s going to be a joy for four years, or she’s already super popular.

Ugh, I knew I should have brought the butt pads. I haven’t gotten up in over three hours, and my ass is informing me that it does not approve of this state of affairs.

Seriously, where were all you jackholes two hours ago? There was basketball to be played and Johnnies to cheer for then.

I don’t know how I feel about the white warm-up hoodies. They’re a little something, but I don’t know what that something is.

At halftime, St. John’s is up 37-28 on New Orleans. I get the feeling we might not be good at the basketball. Justin Simon has been flying high, but Marvin Clark II leads the way with 11 points. Very sloppy play by both teams. I’m really impressed with New Orleans’s rebounding.

The Queen Mother joined me for the second half of the women’s game and the first half of the men’s game; her contribution to the commentary is that the men don’t seem to have very good communication on the floor.

I swear, the dad for this birthday party has spent more time standing up and blocking my view. Either sit down or go get me a hot dog; you seemed to be offering them to everyone else in the section.

I’m not thrilled with this upper deck corner seat, but I find it somewhat reassuring that the woman I think is part of Tiana England’s family didn’t get a much better seat. At least they’re consistent in their dismissal of women’s ticketholders.

Dude behind me had no idea that Mullin had taken over as head coach of the men. I swear. I don’t even go here and sometimes I think I know more about this team than the people who claim to be fans.

It’s petty, but for the most part the arena seems just as quiet for a men’s game as it does for a women’s game, except for the presence of a student section. The people in the upper deck just don’t seem to care about the action on the floor; they just want to be able to say they were there, to show the flag. It’s quieted me as a result (which mom thinks makes it seem that much quieter, ha-ha-ha, it is to laugh).

The birthday party has candy-coated Oreos that look like basketballs, which I did not know existed and now need to be an integral part of my life. I just wish the dad would have spent more than five minutes in a row in his seat.

Well, I can’t say that St. John’s is good, per se, but they’re certainly entertaining. When the passing game is on and Shamorie Ponds is hitting, they’re fast-paced and flashy. If Shamorie’s not hitting and the passes aren’t sharp, then it all falls apart in a hurry. I’m concerned about the rebounding, and I feel like most of the guys are still trying to figure out where everyone likes their passes.

I was very impressed with the Privateers’ offensive rebounding. They never gave up on a ball near the rim. They weren’t necessarily going to get it into the basket, but they were going to give it the old college try, as it were. Their ball control was not good. I love their heart and their intensity, though.

It seemed like New Orleans relied more on their bench than their starters, especially in the second half. Jorge Rosa got big minutes and scored buckets in the fourth quarter. (Well. What would be the fourth quarter if MCBB followed everyone else’s system. You understand why I might still think of it that way.) Bryson Robinson attempted to take a lot of contact and attempted to draw charges. He was, for the most part, unsuccessful in that goal. Near the end of the game, New Orleans started throwing in some of their deep reserve guards, and at least Damion Rosser had his free throw attempts to get him in the box score.

Travin Thibodeaux, who got his name pronounced two or three different ways by the PA guy (seriously, pronunciation guides, how do they frakking work) was strong off the bench, to the point where he got the second half start over Tyren Harrison. He tried to put the team on his back, finishing at the rim and even going deep occasionally. Bol Riek is very tall, very fast, and not very strong- the prototypical extremely tall mid-major center who would be somewhere higher up the ladder if he had fewer flaws in his game. He didn’t seem comfortable at the basket at all. (Granted, given how enthusiastic St. John’s was with defense at the rim, I can’t say as I blame him. We weren’t great at it, but we were certainly enthusiastic about it.)

Be proud of me, loyal readers. I went the entire game without making any paradox puns about Michael Zeno. I’m learning how to pun responsibly. He got on the glass well; even when he wsn’t pulling down the rebound, he made it easier for his teammates to eventually corral the ball. I don’t really remember Makur Puou all that well, which is kind of scary given how much time he spent on the floor. I’m starting to understand why New Orleans seemed to have so much more confidence in their senior reserves than they did in their starters.Play the hot hand, and that’s how the Privateers rolled in the second half.

Troy Green ended up with a lot of fouls and a lot of disagreement with the officials regarding calls that may or may not have been made, the application of which as appropriate would surely have been to the Privateers’ advantage. Turen Harrison got benched in the second half, but did have a spectacular block on Shamorie. Ezekiel Charles didn’t really get going until the second half.

I’m sleep-deprived. These notes on UNO are bad, even for a team I know less than nothing about. And I’m embarrassed and sorry about that. They were a feisty team, and one that did a good job of taking advantage of the Red Storm’s mistakes in the first half, but one that didn’t have the talent or the depth to cope when Shamorie and Marcus were getting their shots to fall.

When I saw the starting lineup, I wondered why Kassoum Yakwe wasn’t starting. Then he came into the game and committed two quick fouls, and now I understand why Coach Mullin doesn’t start him. Ditto but more for Amar Alibegovic, who seemed unable to find a situation that he couldn’t somehow make worse. When he had open shots, he passed them up to teammates who were in worse positions. When he was on defense, he committed unnecessary fouls. He has the body of a brilliant inside player and I’ve seen his shot, but something just wasn’t clicking in this game.

Tariq Owens is ridiculously skinny. It’s surreal in a way, as if you could fold him up and collapse him into a framework for travel. He’s very active and energetic. His accuracy needs a bit of work, though, but I’m glad he was able to draw contact and get to the line. Bryan Trimble Jr. hit a three in the second half and came in fairly late in both halves, if my scorecard is to be believed.

Full disclosure: mom and I both spent a good portion of the pregame, once we were in our assigned seats, admiring Marvin Clark II’s arms. Dude is built. He had himself a great first half, very quietly. He took advantage of his opportunities and hit his shots. When you’ve got well-known star players, you need a guy like that, someone who can make the other team pay for hewing too closely to the original game plan. The guys behind me kept talking about how Bashir Ahmed was trying to do too much, and I can sort of see what they were getting at. He did have a distressing tendency to try and shoot on multiple defenders, with dubious results. His passing was also shaky. I think he thinks Shamorie’s taller than he actually is, which is not an unreasonable mistake to make, all things considered.

Justin Simon certainly likes to sky for those dunks. I think I now know who broke the rim, and I have to apologize to Tariq for accusing him without evidence. He was kept a bit more grounded in the second half, but that was okay, because that’s when the big guns started going off. Shamorie Ponds was able to get the speed game going in the second half, and the passes started getting a little fancier as he and Marcus got a little more confident. He had a fantastic steal where he just stepped into the lane and took the ball away like it was his destiny to have it. Marcus LoVett started raining threes in the second half, and it was a great and glorious thing to watch.

I get the feeling that this team is going to be a beautiful mess to watch; there will be days when they look like they have no idea what they’re doing, when the passes are constantly going into the bench or hitting the padding on the sidelines, when the shots don’t go down and the defense is lacking and the rebounding is non-existent. But there will be days that make those days worthwhile, when the offense is humming like a Ferrari, the threes are falling, and Justin Simon has cleared his flight plan with air traffic control over at JFK.

I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t think Marcus LoVett would have to go crashing into the sidelines to get close to the dance team.

At the start of the second half, Ezekiel Charles was having a bit of trouble getting his jersey back on, for whatever reason. I would have been perfectly okay with him spraypainting his number on his chest and going on with the game without his jersey. (I’m not quite old enough to make it creepy that I’m ogling a college junior, but in a couple of years it might be. But let me enjoy the eye candy while I can.)

Officials were letting a lot of contact go. I was worried someone might get trampled by the end of the game. I am not okay with people getting trampled.

Play of the game, in my opinion, was the snazzy pass by Shamorie that led to the three by Marcus that bounced off the rim and in. I might have had a different opinion if the shot didn’t go in.

Are fans in the upper deck always this quiet? There was almost no interaction with the game in my section. It’s like, why are you here if you aren’t even watching the game? Why aren’t you cheering?

I don’t think I have anything else to say about this game, or at least the atmosphere around Carnesecca, that wouldn’t be perceived as whining, so I think I’m going to stop here.

No, wait, one more thing. They advertised a season ticket holder gift during the game, one of those nifty seatback things that turns a bleacher seat into a cushioned and supported seat. I sit in the bleachers for most of my games, so that would be amazing. Except, as it turns out, that’s only the men’s season ticket holder gift. The women’s gift is a flag. In the retro font. Which the men use and the women mostly don’t. Oh, and it has the Garden on it. Where the men occasionally play. And the women don’t.

In other words, the gift for women’s fans is a giant symbol of men’s basketball. You can see why I might think this is inappropriate.

This is, of course, setting aside the fact that I have a flag already, and I think a flag signed by the whole team for something like three or four years running kicks the ass of any other team-related flag, even if it’s a weird shade of red and one of the grommets is about to tear out.

I think I might actually enjoy watching the kids who play for St. John’s if there weren’t so much goddamn baggage associated with the program, and if weren’t so often so problematic to see how the school treats the men’s program and the women’s program so differently.

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