(belated) Senior Tributes 2018

I love all my seniors, don't get me wrong. Even the ones I vent my frustrations at, ultimately, I cherish as much as the rest of the squad. You have to be a pretty heinous excuse for a human being, the kind of person whose name will no longer cross my lips, to lose that. And usually those kinds of people get rooted out and tossed out summarily on their ear. Those, I do not miss and do not love; their betrayal is all the more bitter for the loyalty that was given.

But it's okay to love some of them more than others, right? And by a confluence of events, an awful lot of them happen to be in this year's class of seniors. These are young women who I may miss on the court as basketball players, but who I will miss even more as people.

That's the joy of this game: you meet some pretty great people. That's the exquisite pain of this game: you know your time with them is inherently limited.

I tend to bury the lede, in case you haven't noticed. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. I like to build up to what I most want to talk about. So we'll start with the furthest and circle back in to the heart and soul of why I write these tributes in the first place.

Michigan is mine because of their staff, and because of our mutual loathing of Ohio State. We don't get to see them a lot, so when we do, it's always special. This year, though, it's been extra special.

Katelynn Flaherty steals the show when she takes the floor. Her stroke is pure and her drive is unquestioned. We've been able to watch snippets of her run through the Michigan record books, and it's been a pleasure and a privilege to be along for the ride. She's adapted her game to the needs of her team, and not every scorer can do that. Playmaking for other people doesn't come naturally to everyone. She's a bright shining star, the brilliant herald of Michigan's rise.


But if you know why I'm a Michigan fan, and if you know why I wear the jersey I wear, you know who my favorite players are. Sure, give me a pretty jumper if you want. But give me grit. Give me hustle. Give me defense. Give me a head for the game. Give me the willingness to outwork your talent, to outwork your size, to outwork what the numbers say you should be bringing to the floor.

That's Jillian Dunston, jack of all trades, terrifyingly broad-shouldered for a guard, entirely too short for a post. No single element of her game is superlative- but that just means she has to think more about what she's doing on the floor. She works incredibly hard on the floor, usually in as literal a sense as possible as she scrambles for loose balls. I am completely unsurprised that she's in the "So You Want To Be A Coach" program and will be completely unsurprised when she's on a Power 5 staff in three years or less.



Iona only has one senior on the roster this year. And I keep thinking there should be two.

Let me make one thing clear: if Philecia Atkins-Gilmore were still on the Gaels' roster, no power on this earth would have kept me from Iona's Senior Day. Battle of Brooklyn be damned, long haul be damned, uncooperative bus schedules be damned. That date would be circled in red on the calendar. I'd probably even hit the following game, for the sake of it being the last, and walk over to the transit center to get the bus home.

There are a precious few people I have had the privilege of meeting in basketball for whom I would run through walls, whose team is my team and whose enemies are my enemies. Phee is one of those few. She is as determined and energetic a leader as I've ever seen. Even as a freshman she was leading her team on the bench, constantly supporting them, constantly bringing the noise.

I still remember Maryland. Do you remember Maryland? March 2016 was pure magic, pure joy. Everywhere I looked, a team that mattered to me or to a friend (and thus to me) was going dancing. We had three choices that March. We didn't go to Waco with St. John's, and we didn't go to Storrs with Seton Hall. We went with the team we knew was going to lose. We went to Maryland for Iona, because it was the first time, because this was what we had been waiting for. And Maryland did to us exactly what we expected- but Phee went down fighting, shooting three after three.

Injuries robbed her of some of her speed, of some of her motion- and they robbed her coach of her confidence, I'm certain. Phee kept leading from the bench anyway.

And then I looked at the roster at the beginning of the year, and after my initial reactions of "Why is anyone wearing 24?" and "Why is anyone wearing 14?" I noticed a gap between 10 and 14 where 11 should have been. My reaction to that was, shall we say, unprintable and would probably have earned me a ban on Twitter. They react badly to threats of violence, even if I doubt I would follow through with such threats. I'm a talker, not a fighter.

Love for a team is about the name on the front, not the name on the back, but for some people I make an exception. And I might have dropped Iona sooner- except for the days when I spotted Phee sitting behind the bench with the rest of us fans, exhorting her team with the same constant encouragement and advice she gave when she was still in uniform. Despite everything, she believes in this nearly winless team and this trainwreck of a season. And I believe in her.

That's why, if you look up, and you look through my Iona notes, you'll see that I chose my words carefully. Phee's not in uniform. She's not on the roster. But she's still the best leader her team has. And she's still my favorite.


So that leaves one senior on the Gaels' roster, and I'm starting to think Billi Chambers has a soft spot for the late bloomers, the ones who finally figure it out as seniors, when they maybe think they have no choice but to figure it out. It happened with Karynda DuPree, and I think it's happening again with Kristin Mahoney.

Kristin looked scared to even be on the court in the scant minutes she picked up her first few years. There are still times when she looks wide-eyed at the defense coming at her and you can imagine her life flashing before her eyes.

She's had to grow up this year, through one of the toughest seasons a team can have. If the losing grinds her down, I don't blame her one bit. But she gets knocked down and she gets up again. Like any good Iona Gael, she fights the good fight. And along the way, she's found a little bit of her footing. It turns out she's better when she's claling her own number than when she's trying to force things for other players. I'm glad she's figured that out. I want ot see her succeed.

It's been a long year. I wish her nothing but the best.



It's late in the year and the Rams don't have a lot of home games left. But if you have the chance to see G'mrice Davis, go see G'mrice Davis. Watching her rebound is worth the price of admission alone. (That's setting aside the work of her teammates, but most of them aren't seniors, so you'll have to find out about them for yourself.)

On her best days, G'mrice reminds me of Jonquel Jones, long limbs and a growing grace. She doesn't have Jones's outside shot, but what she does have is phenomenal rebounding skill. She seems to fly across the paint to claim the ball, and nothing will stand in her way.. Her relentlessness has allowed her to rise high on Fordham's all-time lists. She is a glory and a joy to watch, and if I have a regret about her it's that I let my distaste for Fordham's style of offense rob me of chances to have seen her in previous years.


About Asnate Fomina I can say little. It's been a rough year for her- she hasn't even had the chance to play, so far from home. She's been a steady hand for us at point when she has played, a good solid player who keeps the team grounded. I'll miss her, and miss the things she brought us, and miss the things she could have brought us.



We haven't had as much time as I think I would have liked with JaQuan Jackson. That's the one thing that's saddening about transfers. You get to know them just enough to wish you could have known them longer.

Fierce is the word that comes to mind for Quanny. There's something intense about her eyes that combines with her high cheekbones and the shape of her jaw and chin to make her stare flat-out terrifying when she puts her mind to it. (It also tends to make her photograph very badly, which is a shame, because she's very striking in person.) You get the sense she can intimidate an opponent just by looking them in the eye and making them back down.

Everything about her on the floor is fierce, whether it's her ability to jump the passing lanes or her relentless offensive assaults. She is passionate and electric and fiery. She's a jolt at the right time, or a lightning storm rolling over the opponent.

Fierce and fiery and indomitable, Quanny is the spearhead of the Seton Hall attack. She's a long way from home, and we're glad she came to join us for the time that she did.



You're probably reading this and thinking I wrote things in the wrong order, because ever since this tangle fell upon us I've held Seton Hall close in my heart, as close as I can without giving up that first and deepest loyalty I hold to St. John's.

But there's something about this LIU class of '18 that's special, something I can't help but love, something that calls out to the things I love about basketball. Yes, even in one year, in Nish's case. They don't have the talent of the upper echelon teams, but what they have is grit and determination that would make any coach proud.

What I enjoy most about Denisha Petty-Evans is the family she's brought us. It's good to get a crew together and bring the noise, and they support the team whole-heartedly. They feed the whole team energy. That's not always the case with player families, and it says a lot about Nish and her family that they do.

Nish is fearless. She's gonna keep shooting no matter what. Sometimes that's a bad thing, and usually I'm the first person to call it out. But LIU is a defensive-minded team. We're tentative offensively. Someone needs to step up at that end of the floor, and most of the time Denisha's been the one to do it. We brought her in to lead, and in both deed and word she does so.

It's been a pleasure and a privilege to have her on board, and I'm sorry it couldn't have been for longer.


I've often used the example of Stylz Sanders to explain the plight of LIU, and to remind myself that all complaints about a team's lack of size are relative. After all, how many teams can say with a straight face that they start a 5-9 power forward?

Watching more of LIU than ever this year, I've grown to appreciate the leadership and grit Stylz brings to the floor. She guards whoever, wherever, whenever. I've seen her out on the perimeter, dealing with distance shooters, and I've seen her on the inside, banging against posts who have half a foot on her. She does a little bit of everything, even knowing she's going to be overmatched. You can't measure that kind of heart. You can only quantify its results: floor burns, bruises, ice packs, loose balls recovered, minutes played.

But more than that: while our other two seniors step up with their younger teammates, Stylz is most often the team captain working with the officials, talking to them before games, calmly trying to get calls during games. She's not afraid of letting the officials know she doesn't like a call, but she mostly keeps her cool. She defends her teammates, and that's one of the things I've grown to love about her.

If she wants it, she has all the tools to be a fantastic coach- a good head on her shoulders and a great sense of the game. Maybe there are advantages to being a 5-9 power forward after all.


I can't tell you the exact moment when I decided DeAngelique Waithe was my favorite, but I can tell you what that moment probably was. Almost certainly, it had to be while she was defending an inbounding opponent, arms windmilling in the air, legs kicking out, the arrhythmic call of "Ball! Ball!" serving as a distraction. That is always the clearest picture I have of Angel, defending on the sideline, hands up and right foot out.

There is, of course, much more to her game than this. You don't get a D-I scholarship just for defending inbounds passes. She's a fantastic rebounder and a ferocious shotblocker. For much of this year, she's played with an incredible sense of urgency that has helped power this squad through a good chunk of the year. You see that sometimes with seniors, that sudden realization that this is it, so they kick it up a notch to take advantage of every last moment they have left to them.

I'm finding it hard to come up with words for Angel, not because I've seen so little of her or because there's nothing I can say about her game. It's because so much of it can be summed up in one phrase: I just love to watch her play. Seeing her on the floor makes me truly, deeply happy. I love her defense, I love her power moves in the lane, I love her rebounding. And I feel like I should find a more profound way to describe her play, but sometimes you just don't want to complicate things, you know?


So these are my LIU seniors. They're not rewriting the history books. They're never going to make a ripple in the NCAA tournament, or even in the WNIT. In the grand scheme of women's basketball, they're barely a collective afterthought. But they're my seniors and I love them for what they are, and what they've done, and everything that they've meant to this program.



And, always, at the last, we come to St. John's, to my Johnnies who I love and support beyond all reason, beyond any of my other teams, the ones for whom I will always go to the wall. Even if they didn't start with us, they finished with us in the end. Having chosen, so defined.


I would have loved to have been able to cheer for Maya Singleton for a full four years. It's been pleasure and privilege enough to do it for two. Maybe over four years I would have become jaded, accustomed to her monster blocks and the intimidating staredowns that so often follow them. Maybe I would have demanded even more ferocious rebounding from her, even more of the rim protection and intense defense that she brings to the floor.

It makes sense that she's got military in her family, because there's something almost mission objective based in how she takes the court. She has a job to do and the job will get done. Other teams will throw obstacles in her way, and she'll get through or around those obstacles as they come, because she's not going to let them stay in her way. Her intensity is a sight to behold on the court, and I wouldn't want to be in her way.

But like many an enforcer, her off-court personality is completely different from the intimidating presence she has on the floor. The high cheekbones that turn her stare into a thing of terror also turn her smile into a thing of joy. She can light up a room when she wants to.

We've been blessed to have her for two years. It's not enough, but better that than to have never seen her at all.


Imani Littleton has been the steadiest, or at least the most constantly present, of our seniors. She's been here all four years and has the scars on her knee to prove it. She's suffered for us, been knocked down and picked herself up again for us. I think she might be the senior it's been hardest to get to know. She's quiet, introverted where her classmates are extroverted, polite but clearly uncomfortable in public situations. In some ways she's the least expressive player we have; her face always reflects the same cool, distant concentration no matter what's going on out there. But the rest of her body language is as easy to read as the rest of her... well, isn't. She'll slap the floor when she goes for a steal and misses, or swing her arms on a foul call.

Of our seniors, she's the one I think I would like to know most as a person, and to ask how she's changed in college on the other side of the country from home. There always seems to be a lot going on behind her eyes.

That's not to say she isn't also a damn fine basketball player. The torn ACL took away some of her mobility, and early on, maybe some of her confidence. But she's learned to adapt. She's the heart of our defense, the shotblocker down low to shut down paint penetration. She's not a scorer, and there are times when her missed lay-ups are intensely frustrating. But that doesn't make us love her any less. She's sacrificed too much for us not to cherish her. She's a fighter, and she brings that to the floor every night.


If you know me, you know I'm superstitious about jersey numbers. Numbers mean things, after all. I get a little testy when legendary ones are given out, and tend to see patterns where there probably aren't really any. So it's maybe not surprising when I describe Tamesha Alexander's personality as, "Like Sky Lindsay's, but without Sky's shy and retiring nature."

The joke, of course, is that Sky is one of the most gregarious people in the history of St. John's women's basketball, and possibly in overall Red Storm history.

Sox is just as outgoing as Sky, albeit a teeny bit less sarcastic. Maybe that's just the difference between New York and Philadelphia. She's got a personality bigger than she is, a quick laugh, a smile for everyone. She's a joy to be around, a social butterfly nonpareil. For four years she's been, at best, a second-string point guard, never a huge part of the team's on-court plan. By sheer force of heart and will and personality, she became one of my all-time favorites.

Because here's the thing about Sox as a player- she doesn't shoot the ball. Late in games, when the team's trying to get everyone on the scoreboard, they'll give her the ball- and she'll promptly pass it back. She seems genuinely happier to get the assist on someone else's basket, or to make a good defensive stand. I don't know how many games we've played where she's the last Johnnie yet to score- and refuses to shoot the ball. That's who she is. She doesn't want to run it up. She doesn't want to be the center of attention on the court.

I love Sox to itty-bitty pieces, not for what she does, but for who she is.



It's taken a long time to write this. Part of it is general basketball-related despair. Part of it is a general malaise. But I think part of it is simply denial. I don't want to lose these seniors, even though it's too late and they're already gone. This is, as it always has been, the price of college fandom: we know the clock is always ticking.

Some of them have been undeniable program-changers. Some of them have been game-changers. All of them are valued and treasured, and all of them will be missed.

And we get to do it all again next year.