January 14th, 2018: Villanova at St. John's

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Clutch shooting in the fourth quarter helped St. John's take down Villanova, 70-64. Maya Singleton's 16-point, 11-rebound, five-assist effort led four Johnnies in double figures. Kelly Jekot's 16 points led the Wildcats.

For an entire spectrum of Philadelphians, team effort, diplomatic negotiations, chasing loose balls, and forward momentum, join your intrepid and territorial blogger after the jump.

PSA: it is still cold. Hopefully this will extend to Villanova's shooting and not ours.

Flying solo for St. John's games is the worst- husband has to go play nice with Seton Hall, thanks to the Awkward Bowl next week.

Sky Lindsay always manages to be the suavest person in the room.

Why is it always Villanova fans who don't understand the concept of which bench is which? They're worse than Notre Dame fans and just as bad as UConn fans, I swear.

(Also, should I be weirded out that there are three second-generation players on Villanova? Dude, you might want to think outside the alumnae network.)

There's an AAU (or maybe Jr. WNBA?) team with the Stars logo, and it's kind of cute and kind of sad at the same time.

Note to self: must ask Alisha and Sox if all Philadelphians are this bad at taking hints, or if it's just these doofuses. The sad part is that the youngest person in the group is the only one with some common sense- kid settled himself center court. I applaud his enthusiasm.

Our regular PA announcer has been out the last two games. This guy doesn't have enough resonance for the job.

Oh, FFS, you don't use the home team's sign-making material to make big bright signs for the visiting team. I've already been reduced to just this side of swearing and it's still 20 minutes before tip. At least the people in front of me got the hint and moved center court. Go away, Villanova. Just... go away. If there's one thing I've internalized from one of my best friends being a UConn fan I met in 2002, it's a bone-deep loathing of Villanova.

I love my band people, but if y'all can't keep track of where you are in "The Pretender", please don't perform it.

At halftime, it's 29-25 St. John's. Miss Maya has 10 points to lead the Red Storm. Alex Louin has nine for Villanova. This crew seems overly fond of her hair dye.

Credit where credit is due: I think about half a dozen Villanova students decided to do the men's-women's weekend in New York. I complain enough about people not showing up for both teams, I suppose I shouldn't complain when they do. Personal annoyances shouldn't make me a hypocrite.

This halftime CYO game has been surprisingly good. Some really fun plays. One of these kids has some serious game, though she doesn't seem to have a jumper yet.

Great team win. We beat a good 'Nova team that, while they didn't have their big guns working, did get a lot of hustle plays from their utility players. Team effort is the best effort.

Efficient use of personnel by Villanova- send in the deep reserves at the end of the bench to absorb fouls and protect the big guns from picking up cheap fouls or fluke injuries late in the game. That seemd to be the sole role for Raven James and Cameron Onken. (I think Perretta also got Brianna Herlihy up briefly to play that role, but changed his mind at the last minute.) It's not the craziest idea in the world if you're already down. If nothing else, you can see how well the kids take direction. Bridget Herlihy got some run in the first half, and I seem to remember her hanging out down low, but she made some mistakes with the ball, and her coach did not look happy with her when she went back to the bench. In that context, I can understand why he didn't go back to her in the second half.

Grace Stant seemed to be a go-to reserve for immediate substitution in the forward area, but contributed very little. The Wildcats got excellent minutes out of Mary Gedaka, who seems to have thrown her name in the ring to join the Rebounding Rumble Royale against G'mrice, Angel, and Maya. She got phenomenal reads off missed shots, racing in from deep on the perimeter to claim offensive rebounds. She took contact and got free throws. She did a nice job cutting into the lane for shots, though I'm not sure how much of that was her first step and how much of it was our defense doing dubious work in the paint.

(As it turns out, the people who were being relentlessly clueless were her family. They did all eventually move, which is good. I don't like yelling directly in people's ears, believe it or not.)

I don't know if our defense wasn't ready for Kelly Jekot, or if we were just having collective brain farts when it came to her, or if she really is that fast and that sneaky. But she came in like a wrecking ball in the lane and we got out of the way like she had raised the staff of Moses. Her handle was shaky, though, and we were able to exploit that. We stuck close on Adrianna Hahn most of the night, and while she was able to get off some shots, creating space for herself with fancy dribbling and speed, she wasn't the dynamic offensive force I've seen her be. Alex Louin's shot continues to be extremely funky- she looks like she's trying to emulate Pennefather without remembering that Pennefather was double-jointed. She ends up with a weird hitch that wrecks her follow-through and sends the ball to the corners of the rim, where strange things happen. She's big and physical for a guard, which isn't a fun time when trying to defend her with smaller players and sort of makes me cross-eyed when trying to defend her with the most immobile player on the floor. (Sorry, Imani. But you kind of were.)

Megan Quinn was big, and slower than I remembered. She lumbered along the baseline and didn't seem to have any offensive inclination whatsoever. I seem to remember her occasionally having a three-point shot, but she showed no indication of wanting to use it. Even the things she did well went to waste- she had a great screen to open up Hahn for a three in the early going, but Hahn missed the shot. Jannah Tucker is long and smooth, and I keep saying I don't remember her being a three-point shooter, but at some point I rather think I should. But I don't think she got the angles she wanted.

Villanova was uncharacteristically sloppy today. Usually they're sound on simple fundamentals like passing and dribbling, but today they were careless with the ball. And I don't think burning their timeouts fairly early in the fourth quarter helped. I was surprised they were going with the quick-two-and-foul strategy, given how well known they are for shooting threes.

I love Tamesha Alexander as a person to itty-bitty pieces, but I was not the world's biggest fan of putting her in the game in the first half. (A lot of other people probably were- she was very popular after the game.) She wasn't able to keep up with the speed of the Villanova offense, a phrase I can't believe I actually typed, and was pulled pretty quickly. I'm still not a fan of the Andrayah-at-the-four lineup, but I've been impressed with her rebounding prowess. She plays tough. I like her better as an offensive threat, though, hitting from deep and in the lane. Akina Wellere still looks like she's getting back into the swing of things, but that's fine. At the very least, it's far more survivable than I thought it was. If we all step up together, there's nothing we can't do, at least within reasonable limits.

Qadashah Hoppie was clutch today. She hit gutsy shots in the fourth quarter, and her defense on Hahn was critical to our success. She stayed close and never really let her shake loose. That's a lot to ask from a freshman, even one as good as she is, and she answered the bell. Tiana England went out of the playbook a fair bit, judging from Joe's reactions on the bench, but this time it worked better than it did against Georgetown. She had a nice steal off a deflection in the second quarter. I hope she keeps playing with this kind of confidence. Alisha Kebbe was fierce on the glass and going after loose balls. She stepped up big to seal the deal with two buckets late in the fourth quarter.

Maya Singleton continues to do Maya things, whether it's tracking down loose balls and rebounds like she's got radar, hitting shots down low, taking and receiving contact, or, yes, dramatically exaggerating the contact to attempt to draw a foul. (Maya, dear, many Big East schools sponsor diving, but so far as I know St. John's is not one of them.) I do love her toughness. She's our double-double machine and she powers so much of what we do inside. Villanova made their big runs when she was on the bench. Imani Littleton was really stiff in this game- Gedaka was eating her lunch inside. I don't think she's ever really recovered from the torn ACL, but she's been a trooper through it. I think this highlights the problem in our recruiting- we don't have enough post players and Joe doesn't trust the ones we have. I really don't know what we're going to do next year.

This was a great team effort. Everyone stepped up and did their job. I love that kind of work from the team, when you're not sure who to single out for their game.

Officiating was reasonably balanced, which is to say both sides were screaming about calls and non-calls. Villanova should probably have had a couple of three-shot fouls given to them- we have got to be more careful about hitting people on the follow-through.

It's really hard to get noise going without the dance team. One of these off-seasons I'm going to put together play cards for the cheer squad so we can get coordinated. I really wish we could get them started sooner.

Today was another round of autographs. It went pretty quickly. I was reminded just how gosh darn likeable Sox is. Some folks are friendly, but she's especially outgoing. She wears Sky's number, and I get the feeling the two of them would get on really well.

Next up: Awkward Bowl at Walsh! Happy fun times for your intrepid blogger and her stalwart husband. Early reports are that getting there is going to be a whole new level of pain in the butt, not even considering that it's, well, Awkward Bowl.