October 12th, 2018: Red Storm Tip-Off

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It's also called being a St. John's women's basketball fan.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and of course our non-binary readers of all ages and qualities! College basketball is around the corner, which means that it's time for St. John's to put on their annual spectacle featuring music that is entirely too loud, an MC exhorting noise from indifferent students at every turn, the aforementioned students basically only coming for the free stuff, too much filler programming, and a passing pretense of caring about women's basketball.

The old fart in line a few places behind us can kindly sod off with his Redmen sweatshirt and its racist caricature of a Native American.

Seriously, the kid in front of us thought tonight's event was a game and seemed shocked that it was just Tip-Off. My dude, read your ticket.

We're starting tonight's festivities with an alumni game. Unlike the last few, there are multiple women, and they're mostly actually involved in the offense. I mean, yeah, y'all did not Shenneika Smith was going to be shunted aside, right? She's bombing threes for the red team Sky Lindsay and Jennifer Blanding are out there for the white team, which is actually kind of nice, given that Big Love never did quite finish up properly. The game's at about the speed you'd expect from alumni, but it's still fun. It'd be a little more fun if the dude were announcing every basket so I'd know who the dudes are, but hey, whatever. Oh, hey there, we have another woman in the game, and yes, that's Nadirah McKenith! Got the gang back together!

Kadaja Bailey's family/friends/whoever are out here with custom #30 jerseys, and I think they might have just had names added to replica men's jerseys, which just makes me grin. Antagonizing MBB fans at St. John's is a secret (or not so secret, I guess) joy of mine. My family expresses love through passive-aggressive behavior.

The band already sounds pretty good. We'll see how much of this is alumni influence and what happens a the semester break, though. Recruiting is apparently a bit of a problem.

The dude who won the musical chairs shootout was named Jordan. I think on the Internet this is known as "username checks out".

Cheer looks like they're doing ambitious routines, but haven't gotten them down pat yet, which has pretty much been their MO.

They just showed a really cool all-athletics ad for St. John's. 'sup, DSPN?

Hi, Imani!

Swapping seats with the husband left me with less room for laptop, so you don't get any live shootaround or scrimmage notes. Physically, Kadaja Bailey reminds me so much of a younger Shenneika Smith that it's crazy. Alissa Alston looks like she wants to be Deanna Nolan when she grows up, which is a most laudable on-court goal and a terrible off-court life choice. I still don't know how to pronounce Curteeona, and I couldn't make out whether the PA guy was calling her Tee-Mo, Ree-Mo, or Mee-Mo. At least he's finally figured out how to pronounce Temecula. Justin Simon must be relieved.

'Kina, I do love you dearly, but you do not have mic skills. I realize that beating things into the ground is the STJ approach to talking to the fans, but stop trying to make fetch happen.

I should be worried that Coach Tartamella is aware of my... ah, concerns... about carrying insufficient players to actually have a full second unit. Then again, I reiterate the point that we have nine eligible scholarship players and this is not a good plan. I harp on the Southern Miss game, because the memory of being down to four players is quite indelible, at least to me. Yes, Joe, I know we won, but that would be because we built a 20-odd-point lead before our entire starting lineup went out injured and there were only about two and a half minutes left. No, Joe, I don't care that we made Sports Illustrated for it; I'd rather make it for things like Shenneika from the corner or Aliyyah in the lane or Briana from beyond the arc.

Somewhat fraught moment with Tiana regarding our split loyalties, but given the ambient background noise, we might have been misinterpreting each other's tones. Really glad we dumped Iona by the side of the road at this point.

I could write more, but let's be honest. It's the same nonsense year after year. I thought with Neika and Nana actually making plays in the alumni game, we might actually have something that resembled equality. But we get a shootaround, and the guys get a scrimmage, and the shooting contest was a hot mess. I don't know why I keep going to these things, except someone has to give a damn about St. John's and it might as well be us.