Just the Facts, Ma’am: Fordham started off strong, weathered a Pittsburgh comeback, and came away with the 58-55 win. Bre Cavanaugh had 21 points, while Mary Goulding notched a double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds. Kalista Walters had 22 points and 10 rebounds to power Pittsburgh.
For golden Rams, understudies, point guard yelling, redundant raffles, grit, impossible shots, and “thanks, it has chairbacks!” join your intrepid and nostalgic blogger after the jump.
Good afternoon, folks! Another day, another game. This time it’s Fordham again, hosting Pittsburgh at Rose Hill.
I put down the wrong game time, so we arrived right at tip off. There seem to be a fair number of Pitt fans in the house.
Fordham’s already starting to advertise the UCLA game, which is fantastic. I’d love to see that be a sellout.
At halftime, it’s 29-27 Fordham, after a run by Pitt. All things considered, this is better than I’d think we’d do if you told me before the game that we wouldn’t have G’mrice Davis. She’s in sweatpants, walking stiffly enough that I’m worried it’s either a knee or a back injury. I don’t know how much of this we can sustain; Mary Goulding has three fouls and Johanna Klug two. If things get bad, it might be Kendell Heremaia at center.
I’m not sure how I feel about the Pitt coaching dynamic with the McConnell sisters. Wouldn’t it be weird for players to have someone on the bench you know you can’t go to with any doubts about the coach, because of blood ties? I don’t know. Seems weird to me.
Pika Rodriguez got time in the first half, and yes, I did spend a fair amount of time trying not to think of little yellow Pokémon. Since she’s not particularly fast and she’s not particularly electric, it worked out okay. Cassidy Walsh likes to shoot the three. She’s got good length, but I don’t know if she’s really thrilled about being as tall as she is.
Suzie McConnell-Serio changed up the starting lineup in the second half, going with Kauai Bradley and Kyla Nelson. I can’t say as I blame her. Nelson has a nice shot, though she started trying to rush it in the second half, and made some intense defensive plays. I think she has a lot of promise. Bradley had great positioning on the offensive glass, including one that set up a putback by Kalista Walters. She’s got good speed as well; both of her baskets were on very fast dribble drives.
I don’t know why Danielle Garven didn’t play the second half- she didn’t appear to be injured from what I saw of her. She wasn’t impressive, either, but that’s not exactly a reason to go from starting to completely dropped down the memory hole. Yacine Diop and her strangely colored hair got off to a good start with the early three, but then the two charging fouls hit, and she never got into a groove before fouling out. She’s gangly, and I don’t know if she’s completely used to her body. Star of the show for Pitt was undoubtedly Kalista Walters, without whom Pitt would have been utterly screwed. She powered to the basket for lay-ups and floaters, and tore down offensive rebounds. I don’t know if she was already on the ACC’s radar, but if she wasn’t, this game should have put her there.
I wasn’t expecting that pronunciation of Alayna for Alayna Gribble. You’d think I’d remember more than that about someone who played just over half the game, but she didn’t make any mind-meltingly stupid mistakes or any particularly brilliant plays. She just played. Jasmine Whitney hit a couple of shots in the fourth quarter, but was otherwise unremarkable.
(It is at this point that I misplaced my notes, which aren’t always the greatest notes, but do help me highlight particular plays. I am annoyed by this.)
Katie McLoughlin is enthusiastic, and at least has a vague sense of where to be on defense, but offensively, she is not ready for primetime. Give her another year, though, maybe have her catch up to the speed of the college game, and she’ll be very serviceable. Zara Jillings brought the defense, and one of these days she’s going to get called for the blatant foul she seems to commit in every game I see her in; this time it was a hip-check that led to a Pitt turnover. The McConnell-Hyphens were not amused. Somewhat better offense from her than I’ve seen before, but so far it seems clear she’s more of a defensive specialist. And I’m okay with that. Defense is awesome. Everyone should play more defense, except my teams’ opponents.
(Hello, internet. I am a wee tiny bit loopy right now, and I don’t know why. I haven’t been up that long!)
Ladies and gentlemen, playing the role of G’mrice Davis in today’s performance will be Mary Goulding. So gritty. So clutch. Usually her ratio of “YAY!” to “WTF?!” is 2:1, but today it was more like 8:1. She threw up some wild ridiculous shots that had no business going in, but they did, and the crowd went wild. She rebounded hard and made big defensive plays. Some of the fouls were ticky-tack calls, but she does need to be more careful with her fouls and more aware of the foul situation. Johanna Klug does appear to have run headfirst into the freshman wall and begged for more. She was getting called for travels all day, with a three-second violation or two thrown in for good measure. Whoever’s in charge of post player fundamentals needs to get her in the gym and just work with her for a few hours, or days, or however long it takes, until her footwork is up to snuff.
Kendell Heremaia slid into the starting lineup with the injury to G’mrice Davis. Her three and a slick defensive play got her off to a good start, and her help defense was crucial in preserving the fouls on Mary and Johanna. But she was careless with the ball (there was one sequence where she threw it to somewhere she thought Lauren Holden was going to be, and Lauren was not, whereupon Lauren ripped her a new one with emphasis, which is sort of cute coming from a 5-5 guard). Lauren had a couple of bad, bad three-point attempts that airballed, but her drives down the lane made up for them, and she ran the offense well. Clock management could use a little more polish, but that’s been improving. Bre Cavanaugh had ice in her veins, running down the shot clock to the very end on two different occasions, making big hustle plays, and generally being awesome. She’s such a change of pace for this team. She takes a lot of hits but I could do without some of the embellishment. She’s going to get called for simulation one of these days.
Now that cheer and dance are occasionally making noise, the next step is to coordinate them.
Please stop hitting Bre, y’all. And if the officials could call it, that would be great.
That was a huge win. Pitt’s not necessarily a good ACC team, but they’re still an ACC team with ACC size. To get out ahead of them, lose that lead, and come back, and do it all without our star post- that’s big.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
December 3rd, 2017: Pittsburgh at Fordham
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