November 24th, 2017: Northern Colorado at Fordham

Just the Facts, Ma’am: It wasn’t pretty, but Fordham came out on top of Northern Colorado, 48-33. G’mrice Davis had 14 points and 17 rebounds to lead all scorers. Courtney Smith and Savannah Smith each had 10 to pace Northern Colorado.

For a whole lot of ugly, rude looks, look-alikes, the great mysteries of life, and not being able to spell the word mysteries on the first try, join your intrepid and tired blogger after the jump.
If you don’t hear from me in the next week or so, I’m probably dead of basketball. Tonight starts a ridiculous run of six games in four days. No, that is not a typo. Seton Hall has a Thanksgiving tournament.

I have also baked three apple pies and two loaves of bread, mulled a gallon of cider, and done the laundry, because I’m a boss and that’s what I do.)

First on the docket is a late addition to the schedule; we don’t get a lot of Big Sky teams out this way, and my interest was piqued further when Northern Colorado opened the season with a win over DePaul, so I’m off to Fordham to watch the Rams take on the Bears. First, I’m going to adventure in Manhattan, which may not be the best of ideas on Black Friday, but I don’t control when the Pokémon Go events are. (So much stardust. So little time.)

I love the fact that Fordham flies the flags of all the nations represented on their roster, both players and coaches (at least I think that’s the Latvian flag all the way on the left). Stephanie Gaitley has done a lot to make Fordham a very international roster, and I think it’s great they take pride in that.

Got here so early I was able to place two Pokémon in the local gyms and beat the pass list to the table.

One of the Northern Colorado players has family here. They’re being loud about it. It’s one of the Savannahs. (You might be from Big Sky country if your roster has multiple Savannahs.)

G’mrice’s hair seems to have exploded. More on this as it develops. (Actually, the more I see it, the more I like it. She’s really going for the Jonquel Jones look.)

The anthem singer has a beautiful voice, but she tried to do way too much with it.

At halftime, Fordham is up 21-18. It could have been better, but Northern Colorado also missed an awful lot of shots. If everyone and their mother could please stop committing offensive fouls, that would be great. G’mrice Davis has all the rebounds. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but she has, like, nine boards already.

There’s a woman a few rows in front of me who looks distractingly like Brittany Boyd. I know she’s not- the face isn’t quite right- but she has a similar build, a similar profile, and the same looooooooong hair. And she’s wearing gold, though it is not quite Cal gold.

There’s also a woman two rows in front of me who turns around and looks at me like I personally farted in her purse every time I cheer louder than a slight volume increase. Lady, we’re at a basketball game, in case you hadn’t noticed. I sort of wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t, though.

Today I learned that Kamie rhymes with Cammy, not Jamie. Coach Ethridge is also wearing one of the most hideous white blouses I’ve ever seen in my life. It looks like a rejected Jackson Pollock canvas.

I have seen a lot of bad basketball in my life. I mean, if nothing else, LIU is one of my go-to teams, and while I love them dearly, they are not always very good at the sportsball. And St. John’s has had a lot of bad teams in just trying ot earn a paycheck or sightsee in New York. I think I can recognize a bad team. Holy Mary, Mother of God, but the Northern Colorado team I saw tonight was one of the worst teams I have ever seen in my life, and either this was the worst game of their collective lives or DePaul has no excuse for losing to this collection of what is this I don’t even. What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Abby Kain got her minutes very late in the game, when I was starting to worry that the Bears only had eight players available. Um, she’s kinda tall? Alexis Chapman lists as a guard, but she seemed to be subbing in more as a forward. Her role seemed to be to come in midway through the game; both of her entrances were right near the quarter break, if I recall correctly. (Which I might not. I’m sort of trying to blot this from my memory.)

Tiarna Clarke was the key guard reserve for the Bears. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player with hair as long as hers intentionally play without something to keep said hair out of her face. It fell a little strangely, and one time it did actually get into her eyes. I like her aggression on the drive and dish, though. She and her team don’t quite have the gifts to set up no-look and look-away passes, but I sort of like them at least trying. Bridget Hintz backed up Courtney Smith at center, and while she was occasionally overenthusiastic in the paint, I can’t say that I blame her, and she did have a pretty little bucket in the lane.

I think Savannah Scott was the one who brought family. She was all right, but I don’t actually remember anything she did out there. Savannah Smith, on the other hand, was one of the few bright spots for Northern Colorado. She had a couple of steals- I have to say, she has an ugly shot, but her nose for the ball on defense is fantastic. She could be ruthless out there. Krystal Leger-Walker had a hard block on the Zara Jillings shot that ended the first half. But she couldn’t hit water falling out of a boat until near the end of the game.

Courtney Smith got off to a hot start- for a while, she had all of UNC’s points. But then Fordham realized that rotations that put Lauren Holden on the opposing center are not usually good rotations, rejiggered the defense, and was mostly able to shut her down. There were moments when her size was overwhelming and you could see flashes of what Northern Colorado wanted to do with their offense. And then they sort of panicked, forgot that she existed, and started hositing some of the ugliest shots I’ve ever seen in my life. Kianna Williams was not memorable, mostly because she couldn’t stay on the floor long enough to do anything worth remembering.

My brain is genuinely boggled by how bad this team’s shooting mechanics are. How does a team with Laurie Koehn available as a mentor manage to throw up so many bad shots? I swear, they might be better off going back to the old set shots. If they’re going to win, they’re going to win ugly: off defense, off hoping the other team somehow hits fewer shots than they do, and off getting lucky on some of those threes.

Coach Gaitley waited longer than I would have to go to her deep bench. G’mrice was limping (she took a shot to the thigh that seemed to linger) and looked gassed; the way the game was being called, I would have been worried about a cheap shot from one of the UNC posts. But she did go to them, much to the joy of the people behind me, who I think were Katie McLoughlin’s parents. Katie should have taken the three, passing out to kill clock be damned; hitting one of the looks she had would have brought at least a very small portion of the house down. Ralene Kwiatkowski was called upon rather earlier, only because Lauren Holden fouled out on a terrible life choice. She controlled the pace rather well, I thought; I’d like to see her get some more meaningful minutes and see if she has as sure a hand with the offense then.

I’m starting to sense a trend with our Kiwis. You can’t fault their motor, but they’re definitely more defensive-minded than offensively inclined. I love Kendell Heremaia’s rebounding on the baseline, but the form of her shot is a hot mess. I love Zara Jillings’s work on the ball, but the only shot she managed to hit needed help from both the backboard and the rim to go down. Someone on that bench is going to have to step up as a reliable offensive option, whether it’s Kendell or Zara finding a shot, or someone else sneaking in and taking some minutes.

I like the fact that Lauren Holden’s shot has such a quick release. I would like it much better if Lauren seemed more concerned with the accuracy of the shot than the speed of its release. She plays fast, and her communication on the floor is inconsistent- she’s good at initiating, but not necessarily good at answering, if that makes any sense. And sometimes she needs to slow her roll on defense; her final two fouls, the trip and the push, were completely unnecessary and counter-productive. Bre Cavanaugh showed a very quick first step to the basket and a lot of willingness to drive. She had some really nice plays on the glass, though if more of those back-taps had gone to her teammates it would have been helpful (she did have one nice one to G’mrice, though). It seems like she’s getting her feet back under her after the concussions and the transfer year, and she’s getting comfortable on the floor again. I’m happy for her.

Mary Goulding... well, she tries, and you can’t fault her effort, and you can’t fault her heart. But I feel like she grabs a fair number of her rebounds almost by accident, and in this one her shots weren’t going down at all. She had good opportunities and couldn’t make anything happen with them, which was the ongoing theme of this game but was especially apparent with her. Johanna Klug got off to a good start and was the best counter we had to Smith in the early going. But the third foul right at the end of the first half really limited her availability in the second half. So did the way travels were being called. She looked really frustrated at points. G’mrice Davis pulled down all the rebounds. She was bound and determined to pull down all the rebounds. I think she actually pulled one away from a teammate at one point. I’m not sure if my favorite play of hers was one of the rebounds she chased down or the spin move in the lane.. She’s so much fun to watch. Very springy. Her offensive limitations will probably catch up to her at the next level, but someone will want her rebounding.

We’ve got to find someone on the bench we can trust, though. I don’t think we can keep riding G’mrice like this. And we need to start grooming a point guard; as soon as Lauren went out of the game with foul trouble, it was like no one knew what they were doing. We had enough trouble with Northern Colorado uglying up this game without adding chaos and confusion to the mix on our own.

The officiating was hot garbage, and while I think Coach Ethridge needed to maybe calm down a little about the calls, she wasn’t necessarily wrong. We got the benefit of the doubt on pretty much everything there might have been a question on, and then some. (Zara. I am looking at you. You blatantly shoved an opponent out of bounds and got possession out of the deal.) There was an epidemic of charges and a plague of travels. This did not help the general ugliness of the game.

Your players should not be doing more cheering and leading the crowd than the cheerleaders. Pretend to care!

Surprisingly smooth ride home, all things considered. Two hours, pretty much flat.

But seriously, though, how in the name of the flying spaghetti monster did Northern Colorado manage to beat DePaul?