November 10th, 2017: St. Francis NY at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma’am: St. John’s shook off a tenacious St. Francis team to win big in the end, 73-49. Andrayah Adams and Qadashah Hoppie each had 16 points off the bench to pace the Red Storm, who collectively blocked 14 shots. Alex Delaney was the only Terrier in double figures, notching 11 points.

For exhaustion, belated notes, a recurring theme, and an endless array of ponytails, join your intrepid and suspicious blogger after the jump.

Good afternoon! You know what today is? Today is Opening Day! St. John’s is opening with a men’s/women’s doubleheader, which means being at Carnesecca at the ungodly hour of 4:00 on a Friday afternoon.

Would it have killed them to put both the men’s and women’s schedules on the giveaway cup? It wouldn’t have cost extra. Not only do I know the industry, but I’ve worked with the vendor. If you do a schedule giveaway for a doubleheader, it would seem logical to have both schedules on it, or at least so I’d think. (That being said, it’s a nice cup. But again, I know the vendor’s work.)

Hi, Sky! Sky Lindsay has the call for this game on ESPN3. Ooh, they’re showing highlights. It would be creepy if I went down and watched over her shoulder, right? Right.

We’re playing St. Francis College, the team and coach that always inspire rage in me.

Oh, good, Andrayah Adams is dressed; she was in sweats last game.

Shouldn’t y’all have cleaned the glass maybe before 15 minutes prior to tip?

Oh, for heaven’s sake. The big fancy scoreboard graphics are already set up for the men’s game. I know y’all have the SFC logo on file. It’s little things like this, utter indifference to the women’s team, that makes me all twitchy when it comes to St. John’s. (Okay, they found the right graphics.)

Shenneika, are those jeans? On the bench? In a coaching position? They’re nicely pressed and look good on her, but if they’re jeans I’m still disappointed. I was raised that jeans are not appropriate wear for formal occasions.

Oh, dear. There are several SFC fans behind our bench. The benches reverse between women’s and men’s games, and someone at the ticket office must not have been paying attention.

Kayla Charles’s hair seems to have gone floof. I like. (I mean, not that her hairstyle choices are mine to judge. But I like the way it looks on her.)

At halftime, St. John’s is up 25-20, and I am not pleased. The Terriers’ defense has taken advantage of our sloppiness, and the rim has been unkind. Three-pointers abound for both teams. Our passing needs to be sharper.

I probably should not make jokes about Tariq Owens breaking the rim if he’s sitting a few rows away from me.

PA guy needs a pronunciation guide and to announce subs; if the other team doesn’t have names on their jerseys and the players aren’t particularly distinguishable, it’s hard to tell who’s on the floor.

That was closer than it should have been, and sloppier than it should have been, but we got out of there with the win. The freshmen took over in the second half, and it ws good to see a hint of the future.

St. Francis is always hard to write notes about, partially because Thurston makes me angry, and partially because a whole bunch of more-or-less interchangeable white girls with ponytails and no names on their jerseys are hard to differentiate, especially when the PA guy is the literal worst at announcing substitutions. I harp on this, but when you don’t know a team, you have to have some way of figuring out who all these people are.

Samantha Keltos had a really pretty turnaround shot in the fourth. Practically textbook. Tori Wagner did a nice job cleaning up on a broken play in the third quarter. At least I think that’s when she did it. I was surprised Thurston didn’t go to them more, given the Utopia Parkway Block Party we were throwing. (Hmmm, no, doesn’t quite have the same ring as the Seventh Avenue Block Party.) I think Ally Lassen had decent minutes, as few as they were, but I can’t put my finger on what. I don’t think any of the other reserve forwards did anything worth mentioning.

Abby Anderson got off a couple of nice shots, but I already lost track of whether they were midrange jumpers or shots in the lane. Mia Ehling had a pretty three-pointer. I’m sure Dana DiRenzo brought something in her minutes, but if you pressed me for what, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, even right after the game.

I think this is Amy O’Neill’s first year starting, so I’m not completely surprised that she had the deer in the headlights thing going for much of the second half. She had to literally stop and collect herself more than once when the defense came at her (yes, life does come at you fast sometimes, doesn’t it?). She was good on the boards, though. Very ruthless. Jade Johnson did something early in the game (though I don’t have my full notes at this point, so I don’t remember exactly what it was. Play by play says it was the three-pointer to open the scoring, though I could have sworn that was in the second half.

There’s just something I don’t like about Alex Delaney. It wasn’t just the deep three-pointers she was hitting to keep the Terriers in the game for longer than they had any right to be. She plays tough, and she’s not always clean. I’ll be glad when she finally graduates. Lorraine Hickman is tall, and she moves better than I expected from someone with a knee brace that big. I think she was the one with the big cheering section. Maria Palarino was physical but otherwise unmemorable.

Coach Thurston kept riding the refs for most of the night, which I thought was a pretty impressive piece of hypocrisy, given some of the pushing and shoving that was going on down low. There were a couple of moments on out of bounds calls where I could be persuaded that he had a case, but one must be careful as to how much one complains to the refs, lest they decide that your complaints are no longer worth logging.

The team was so adorably excited when Shamachya Duncan got into the game and immediately hit a three-pointer. Those are the best moments. Tamesha Alexander does not work the Pippi Longstocking braids as well as she thinks she does. She’s a breather guard at the ends of quarters, and I was kind of hoping she’d be more than that by this time in her career, but she’s still an adorable person. I thought we’d see Kayla Charles earlier rather than later in this game, but for whatever reason, Joe kept her on the bench until the very end of the game.

Andrayah Adams, welcome back from that kryptonite extraction procedure you underwent during the offseason. She was awesome. She had open threes and canned them, and threw up two high-arcing floaters that looked more like tennis lobs. They were very much in the vein of “No, no, YES!” but they were amazing. She also had a fantastic steal. Qadashah Hoppie had herself a second half. She showed absolutely no fear of taking contact and astonishing body control. I’m not sure how I feel about her defense in the team scheme, but I like her aggressiveness in the passing lanes. I’m looking forward to the first team autograph session so I can confirm with her the proper pronunciation of Qadashah, as the PA guy has said it multiple different ways. Spelling is not a problem, and in conversation I can call her Q, but I have this thing where I like to know how a person actually says their name.

I don’t think Akina Wellere was ready to be the focal point of opposing teams’ defensive planning. She was double-teamed pretty consistently, sometimes even triple-teamed, and she had a lot of trouble coping with that. She threw up a lot of contested shots. She got a little better in the second half, but I’m very glad we didn’t have to rely on her to win. Maya Singleton was throwing a block party on the baseline, and everyone on St. Francis was invited. She seemed to enjoy giving them the staredown on the ones where the shooter got knocked down. I love her fierceness. I’m not as sure about her jumper, but I like when it goes down. (I am also insanely jealous of her cheekbones. She’s got amazing bone structure. Yes, these are all things I notice. I thought I noticed you noticing me noticing.) Imani Littleton took a fall in the second half that kind of freaked me out a little bit, because she was slow getting up, and she seemed to be limping a little afterwards. Given the torn ACL, I can understand why Joe was cautious with her after that. She co-hosted the block party, doing so with fewer dramatics but just about as much power as Miss Maya did. I really wish she’d find some confidence in her offense, though. It’s been long enough. The problem in this game, though, was that she was throwing shots up at the rim rather haphazardly. Maybe there’s a fear of contact mixed in there now, but I’m not completely certain of that hypothesis.

Quiet game for Alisha Kebbe, but she still brought the defense. I like when she brings the defense. She can be so fantastically disruptive. That being said, I’d like to see her be more offensively aggressive. We’ve seen too many players come into this program and develop as defensive stoppers, but lose their offensive acumen, or confidence, or something in exchange. We can’t afford to keep relying on one or two scorers and hope that everyone else can contribute just enough. It’s not that I don’t love our defense, it’s that I think we need to be in a non-exclusive relationship with defense. Tiana England got off to a slow start; she looked like she was having a little bit of trouble getting around. But in the second half, right after Qadashah got going, Tiana seemed to find inspiration. Her passing got fancier, the game sped up, and she really seemed to find the confidence she needed to start driving with authority.

So I’m thinking we’re always going to be a slow-starting, hard-finishing team. This might be okay, but I’m not sure that this is sustainable with as short a roster as we have. Unless Sox, Machi, or Kayla makes a giant breakthrough early in the season, we’re essentially playing with seven, and I don’t know if we can keep coming back from slow starts if we’re that shallow. Foul trouble’s going to hit, or someone’s going to get hurt.

Officiating was mostly tolerable, though there were a couple of plays where we were wondering why there was no foul on the contact. Cut both ways, though, so I guess that’s fine.

Cheer has got to get their act together. Can’t get distracted by the other team doing a “DE-FENSE!” chant on their bench.

I still think it’s sexist for the male dancer not to get pom-poms. He’s on the dance team, isn’t he? Shouldn’t he get the same equipment as everyone else?

See you next week! The next game is also a double-header, but I have no idea how to write volleyball Game Notes of Doom, so y’all dodged a bullet on that one.