February 12th, 2018: St. Francis PA at LIU

Just the Facts, Ma'am: The Red Flash of St. Francis University got off to a hot start and never looked back in their 85-54 win over LIU. Maya Wynn had 18 points to lead the Red Flash, who shot just over 55% from the field. Denisha Petty-Evans led LIU with 18 points, including five triples.

For moments of playing the wrong sport, loads of expired soda, Mario Karting, timidity, temerity, and crankiness, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.


It's the Red Flash. It's the Blackbirds. It's basketball in Brooklyn. What's not to like?

I'm currently killing a little time before the game in a nearby Starbucks, it being the nearest place with both a place where I can charge my tablet and things I can drink but not eat (husband is buying dinner, it would be tacky to eat right before). Their taste in music is great, but these ladies need another person or two behind the counter. Possibly an octopus.

I guess tonight is BHA? LIU is wearing eye-searingly pink warm-up shirts, and Autumn Ashe has bright pink wraps on her crutches. Ugh, please don't tell me we're going to be watching the Pinkbirds or the Pink Flash.

I should pick up more LIU gear. Don't have nearly enough LIU shirts, so I've had to settle for dressing like a beatnik and wearing a silly hat.

There are way too many people in St. Francis gear here. I mean, I know one of their kids is from Brooklyn, and I know they travel, but c'mon, man. We're going to need Denisha's family in force.

St. Francis has their numbers on their shorts. I'm not sure what to think about this, other than that it's unusual. At least these are their actual uniforms. No one seems to be wearing excessive amounts of pink. Small mercies. Maybe BHA was Saturday?

At halftime, it's 42-23 St. Francis, and quite frankly, things could be worse. Our offense is offensive and we can't hold on to the ball for love nor money. The graduate students are dueling; Denisha Petty-Evans has 14 for LIU, while Ace Harrison has 11 for the Red Flash. Only difference is that Jessica Kovatch and Maya Wynn each have seven in support of Harrison, while only two other Blackbirds have scored, period.

Most teams have players come out one by one for intros and do whatever rituals they've chosen with the team's hype person, for lack of a better word. (It's Shavonte Zellous for the Liberty, for example, and Tamesha Alexander for the Red Storm.) St. Francis walked out with the five starters arm in arm.

One of the refs (Aldrich, I think?) got distracted by a small child before the game. It was cute.

Our halftime entertainment is Girl Scouts playing Knockout. *throws up Scout salute*

Well, I guess it could have been worse. At least we didn't have to play UConn, I guess. And if the defensive game plan was to shut down Jessica Kovatch, then that's the part of the plan that worked. It's just that we didn't manage to shut down anyone else.

Look, PA guy, the answer to my complaints about inconsistent announcing of the opposing subs is not to stop announcing them at all. When the other team doesn't wear names on their jerseys, I need a trained professional to indicate when new people without names on their jerseys have entered the game.

Jenna Mastellone is not ready for prime time. That's about the nicest way I can put it. I realize she's a freshman, and buried so deep on SFU's bench that she might even be a walk-on. But her ballhandling is bad and her defensive positioning is bad, and we're just going to pretend that the free throw that whispered against the very bottom of the net didn't happen. Caitlin Carroll sneaked in a three-pointer near the end of the game, and I can't begrudge her that, though I can certainly question the excessive celebration from her teammates for going up 30+. Karson Swogger has an interesting curve/spin to her three-point shot that got it to curl back towards the basket. (I am also probably a terrible person for thinking her name sounds like a position one plays in Calvinball.) Leah Morrow comes at you like a cannonball, which occasionally meant turnovers and at least one charge. But it also results in steals and fast breaks for the Red Flash, and given how much they like to run, that does a lot for them.

So many tall, skinny people. Cannot cope. Can't shake feelings of mild jealousy. I'm trying to remember who had the nifty turn over her shoulder for a basket. I think that was Courtney Zezza, who did a nice job of finishing near the rim and taking advantage of being overlooked. Jill Falvey made some stops on the defensive end. Haley Thomas was the last post off the bench, and she seems to have embraced the Red Flash's offensive strategy of "shoot ALL the threes", though she hasn't quite mastered the art of where or when.

I am starting to take a bit of a dislike to Jessica Kovatch. It's not the one born of reluctant respect, either. It's the one born of a player complaining to the ref at every single call she doesn't like, except for the times when her teammates get to her first and wrap her up before she can say or do anything. The most generous reading would suggest that she was frustrated at the defensive pressure she faced and the shots she couldn't hit. But we lost by 30, so I'm not exactly inclined to be generous. She's got game, but I don't believe the hype. The Red Flash got really good minutes out of Caitlin Kroll, who did a lot of everything. She was at her best taking advantage of LIU's mistakes, hitting the deck for loose balls and disrupting the ballhandler- SFU threw a press at us that we were not equipped to handle with a freshman point guard. But she did everything for the Red Flash. I think we overlooked her a bit.

It's somewhat less explicable how we managed to overlook Ace Harrison, because she's very tall, very strong, and at least in this game was wearing bright green sneakers. She hit back to back threes to open the game, and was a nightmare match-up for us all night because of her perimeter game. We tried to match her with DeAngelique Waithe, but Angel is not at her best as a perimeter defender, to put it lightly. So that didn't go well. Harrison defends like a guard and is built like a forward, and these are not good things for us. Maya Wynn still has one of the best names in women's basketball. Her game is a strange hybrid at times. She took over in the second quarter with seven points, going deep and driving the lane with equal skill. Kyasia Duling got into foul trouble in the first quarter, and I think it says a lot about her and the trust her coach has in her that she played most of the first half, even when she picked up the third foul late in the second quarter. I do think that the foul trouble took away from her ability to defend inside- there were possessions later in the game where LIU was able to get a little leverage close to the basket, and I think she was one of the defenders in those scenarios.

Life comes at you fast, and so does St. Francis. They like to run on offense and press on defense, and it's not easy to prepare for that onslaught, especially since they send in so many players that their squad is usually fresh.

I get the feeling it's going to be an interesting year next year with Destoni Willock as our primary low post player. She's fantastically disruptive to the other team's offense... it's just that she's almost as disruptive to her own team's offense as well. She deflected a lot of passes and chased down a lot of loose balls, but she had trouble holding on to the ball and minding her footwork. Ella Vaatanen's shot is improving, though I don't know if that step forward is legal or not. I'm glad she's worked on her strength in that regard. She showed some good hustle today.

The player who surprised me in a good way in this game was Seneca Richards. I figured she'd be a good match-up against St. Francis, since she's a tall player with perimeter skills, and thus some comfort on the perimeter defensively. She was very aggressive and very disruptive, going after the ballhandler with wild abandon. I think it affected her offense, but I'll take the defense in that situation. Paris Jones needs to not foul the damn shooter- she did that twice, including on a three at the end of the first quarter that really did a number on the game's momentum. She knows how to use her lack of size to her advantage, getting low to steal rebounds and get loose balls, but there are times when I just want to dope slap her.

I don't know why Jeydah Johnson couldn't hold on to the ball, but it was bad. She played like she had turned her hands to stone and then smeared butter all over them. It looked like she was overshooting the ball, too; her shots were way too strong, going over the basket instead of at it or in it. Not her night, to put it mildly. DeAngelique Waithe did what she could on the boards and in the paint, but the St. Francis defense collapsed on her when she started to drive, and there's only so much you can do when two or three tall people are coming at you at once. And while she's a solid defender in the post, she's at a loss on the perimeter, which led to Harrison opening the scoring with two triples. Stylz Sanders chased down rebounds, but as undersized as she is, she was outmatched and outgunned.

Denisha Petty-Evans lit it up from beyond the arc, but sometimes it seemed like she was the only Blackbird on the floor who was actually willing to shoot the ball. If this is going to be as defensive-minded a squad as I think Coach Del Preore wants it to be, it still needs someone who's going to be a shooter. Nish fills that, er, niche, for this year, but what about next year? Near the end of the game, there were moments where she looked like she was super frustrated, and I can't say I blame her. Tia Montagne played like a scared freshman, especially when the Red Flash's defense pressured her. There was a play where she had to inbound the ball, couldn't find anyone, couldn't get a look, and clearly panicked by throwing it at DeAngelique Waithe right before the five-second violation would have kicked in. Attempting to lob a weak pass over Ace Harrison is a terrible plan. Tia spent most of the night looking like she was in over her head. This was not a game we could have afforded to be without Drew Winter for (and I have no idea what's up with her, though to be fair we weren't winning that game even with a full roster).

Someone other than Nish needs to be willing to shoot. And everyone needs to get them to a shooting coach. This, perhaps, cuts to the quick of what LIU's problems are. I love this team, but sometimes they play way too scared.

She was wearing black, not blue, but does it count as a real live Mario Kart moment if a Maryland alumna shoots an offensive player out of the air?

Refs missed at least one out of bounds call and a few fouls, but all things considered, it's hard to get too upset at them. They're not why we lost the game.

If nothing else, this game showed us the difference between the top of the conference and everyone else. In a one-bid conference, sometimes being the most balanced team on the floor is enough to seize the day.