December 18th, 2017: Kansas at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: It took overtime and a record-tying performance from Maya Singleton, but St. John's put on the afterburners in OT to beat Kansas 65-53. Singleton finished with 14 points and 24 rebounds, more than half the Red Storm's total. Brianna Osorio led Kansas with 14 points.

For rebounding, bad ballhandling, disturbing offense, getting buff(ed), a distinct lack of sleep, and the endless looming presence of the black void, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.


The GNoD's whirlwind tour of New York and New Jersey basketball continues tonight at St. John's, as the Red Storm hosts Kansas from the Big XII. Fortunately for the tattered remnants of what I laughingly call my sanity, tomorrow is an off day, which gives me enough time to finish these notes, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, shop for Christmas baking materials, and fall over, not necessarily in that order. Please let Kansas not go too deep into their rotation tonight, I'd love this to be a short set of notes.

It's not that I don't love you, dear readers, but seven players are easier to write about than thirteen.

I think one of the trainers just tried to buff Imani Littleton, and I don't mean in the video game sense. She's holding something that looks like a very tiny fioor buffer and just ran it along Imani's upper right arm.

Kansas very helpfully has their numbers on the right sleeve of their warm-up shirts, but it's somewhat less helpful when the injured player won't turn towards me. (And it's only on the short-sleeved shirts and she's wearing the long-sleeved shirt anyway. Their stuff's pretty nice for adidas. I do prefer Under Armour, and not just because they outfit most of my teams.

Alisha, Tiana, Andrayah, y'all are making me cold, put a shirt on.

A bit early for the occasion, but Santa is in the house. I guess they were worried the kids would swarm him on Thursday.

A strange man, or at least a slightly quirky one, just bought me a drink. Should I be worried? (Nah. It's just my band dad.)

Okay, if the band is adding "Ease on Down the Road" back to the rotation, I will be a very happy blogger indeed.

I so want to know the backstory of the dude with the Kansas jersey.

There is a dude with a violin in the courtside seats, and if this means we get a violin anthem, it's a sign that everything's coming up Queenie.

Public safety has posted an updated list of things that can't be brought into the arena. Nothing we didn't already know about. Nothing I'd either be stupid enough to bring in or careless enough to get caught with. I'm not worried; public safety not only wasn't concerned about my flag, dude asked me to make sure I'd brought it. I think they're worried about flags on poles, not simple fabric flags.

Violinist was okay, but not great.

We've turned them over 13 times, and yet we're tied at 22 at halftime. Alisha Kebbe has eight points for St. John's, and Maya Singleton has 12 rebounds (out of 19- guys, it's okay to pull down a rebound, Maya won't kill you as long as you're on her team).

Our resident Santa has a motorized cart (looks like a seated bike, but without the pedals) with Rudolph on the front. So I guess Rudolph is pulling his sleigh!

Joe Tartamella has been so detached during this game that I'm starting to wonder if someone slipped a little something in the cooler. Dude, share the wealth. Mama needs a drink. Mama needs all the drinks. And this is after we won, mind you. We just shouldn't have needed overtime to do it.

I don't think it turned out to be game-changing, but Kansas blowing a timeout late in the first quarter, on a St. John's shot clock violation, to gain possession of a loose ball that would have belonged to Kansas on the tie-up, is one of the most dubious in-game coaching decisions I've ever been able to dissect.

Tyler Johnson brings a lot of size off the bench, and either has a lot of ups for her build or has teammates convinced that she has a lot of ups for her size- they were throwing passes to her that could easily have been categorized as alley-oops, and she almost made those plays work. She's very light on her feet. She boxed out well down low. That screen was definitely not legal, though. Chelsea Lott was immediately recognizable by her puffy pigtails (somewhere between Nykesha Sales and Tamera Young territory, so I'm not sure if they're puffs or full pigtails) and long arms on the glass. Micaela Wilson made some dubious decisions beyond the arc and on defense.

Eboni Watts liked that corner three- I think all of her attempts were from the corner. She's a tough cookie. She was able to grab rebounds out of the scrum in the paint (and there were many scrums). Sydney Benoit got some brief minutes in the first half, but didn't do much with them, and Kansas seriously tightened their rotation in the second half, so that was the last we saw of her.

It felt like Kylee Kopatich didn't play all that much, even though the box score tells me otherwise. The two fouls that took her out of the game in the first quarter left an impression. She had no business setting up outside, just looking at the long shot she put up today. I think she ran out of energy near the end. Bailey Helgren, the tall freshman who took the opening tip, was the starter who didn't play a lot, and other than solid followthrough on the that opening tip and her general height, she didn't leave much of an impression. Austin Richardson did not endear herself to the room with the shove to Tiana England's back- I understand that Kansas was fouling deliberately, but there's a difference between intentionally fouling and an intentional foul, and she trod that line mighty close. She was physical in general and tough on the boards.

Brianna Osorio got loose in the second half, going to the rack for buckets and drawing contact. She was exceptionally careless with the ball, even by the standard Kansas set in this game, because both her passing and her dribbling were sub-par. She made up for it somewhat with her on-ball defense, but not enough (clearly, because despite the rebounding edge Kansas lost the game). I'm pretty sure the listed height given for Christalah Lyons includes her hair. She drove the lane hard and threw up some shots that had no business going in; on the other hand, some of the shots that went in and out or hard off the rim had no business not going in, so I guess that evens things out. The rims were both misbehaving all night.

I can't say enough about how bad Kansas's ballhandling was. They were extremely careless with the ball, both while in their offense and in the open floor. Any good defensive team in the Big XII is going to eat them for lunch with room for leftovers.

In desperation in the first half, Joe turned to Kayla Charles for some minutes. They were not the most terrible minutes in the world, but I can understand why he didn't trust her to go back in there. Our rebounding was almost completely terrible, she's theoretically supposed to do something about that, and she did not. Qadashah Hoppie seems to have gotten on opponents' radar already, but was able to shake loose for some threes, none bigger than the one in overtime. I think she's lost some of her initial fearlessness, and that's a shame. (And if that's Joe imposing his slowdown offense and tendency to freak out at single mistakes on her, we're going to have a problem.) Andrayah Adams stepped up on defense and on the offensive glass. She laid a monster block on Osorio. I do wish she'd hone that floater in the lane a little more. When it goes in, you're breathing a sigh of relief, but when it doesn't, that's when the swearing and general questioning of sanity starts.

I feel like I maybe shouldn't be as hard on Tiana England as I want to be. She did intercept passes, and she did make some fantastic ones- her rapport with Akina Wellere is excellent. But her shooting was awful- and most of those shots were right at the basket, including at least one wide-open look on the break. Her defense, at least for most of the first half, was terrible (when you have to take the blame for two breakdowns in a row...) and tentative. And her game management... I blame Joe for that most of the time, if only because that sort of "let's just dribble ten seconds off the clock for no good reason" nonsense has been going on before Tiana ever got here and will probably keep happening even after she graduates. But it's especially prevalent with her, and I can't shake the feeling that her tentativeness is rooted in something more than being unsure what play to run. I hope she shakes it off sooner rather than later. Alisha Kebbe got off to a strong start offensively and helped drop the boom in OT. She faded out a bit in the middle, but was pretty solid overall.

I love when Akina Wellere goes for the three-pointer and doesn't stop too long to think about it. When she gets her feet set for that angle three and just goes for it, it works like a dream. If she tries to think too much about it, then she overthinks it and usually ends up changing her spot and missing the shot. Her lack of speed was exploited on defense. Imani Littleton brought defense and some rebounding. Maya Singleton brought all the rebounding (we figured she was close to a school record, and it turns out she was about as close as you can get without breaking it- she tied one that had been standing since 1976!) to the point where I wasn't sure other Johnnies remembered that they were allowed to rebound. It's okay, guys, Maya won't kill you as long as you're on her team. Huge game for her on both ends of the floor. I don't think we could have asked for much more from her.

We bring in players who are at their best when they're running the ball, and proceed to put them in a very measured, very slow-paced offense. This would appear to be a problem to me, but I'm not a coach.

Officiating was the usual pile of hot garbage, but I'll admit the stink was about equal on both sides.

It is one thing to charge $4 for a small bottle of soda, St. John's. It is yet another thing to keep charging that $4 and downsize the bottle. I mean, seriously, guys.

We did just enough to eke out a win against the likely worst team in the Big XII. Maybe that'll be enough against a good MAC team too. But it's not going to be enough against the Big East, and if we want to have a chance in conference, we need to get our act together.